Vincalis the Agitator

by Holly Lisle

  In spite of the day’s disaster, he was almost excited. He sensed massive potential, and an opportunity for himself, one he doubted anyone else sensed.

  Besides, for him, at least, the day hadn’t been a total disaster. He was unscathed, many of the Masters of the Dragon Council were surely lying right there in the Gold Building, twisted beyond all humanity—which made him happy—and Velyn was dead, and he hadn’t needed to do a thing to make that happen.

  With those cheering thoughts, he went into his workroom, buoyed by visions of future greatness.

  Grath Faregan, barred into one of the midlevel safe rooms in the Gold Building, listened with his ear to the door for any more screeching or snarling.

  Just outside the door lay poor Omwi, who prior to the rewhah blast had been a bit older, a bit slower, and a lot fatter than Faregan. Omwi, who made the mistake of bolting for the same safe room as Faregan, and expecting that Faregan would share. Omwi, who forgot that he was the only obstacle standing between Grath Faregan and the Grand Mastership of the Secret Inquest.

  Omwi, who made an unimpressive little pile of cinder, Faregan reflected, peeking out the weapon slit. Poor fellow. Just not quite fast enough to get to the door first, and not quite smart enough to figure out that what he really needed was a different door.

  Faregan leaned against the back wall and smiled. He was in charge. He had a favor coming from the Dragons—a big favor. And he already knew what he wanted more than anything else in the world.

  “What’s out there?” Jess whispered.

  Patr peeked through the weapons slot, paled, and pulled his face back far enough that all three of them had a clear view of one huge, yellow eye staring in—before Patr shut the slot. “You don’t want to know,” he said.

  “We’re trapped in here,” Jess whispered. “Just like in the Warrens.”

  Wraith looked at her sidelong. If she got to thinking this was like being in the Warrens, she was entirely capable of going to pieces. Rational as she was about other things, she wasn’t rational about that. He said, “This isn’t like the Warrens at all. We can walk through the door anytime we please. We just aren’t going to like what’s waiting on the other side.”

  Patr shuddered.

  Wraith wished he hadn’t seen that shudder. If it scared Patr, he certainly didn’t want to deal with it.

  “They evidently still had some live ones in the piles,” Patr muttered.

  “What do we have to do to get past them?” Wraith asked.

  “Kill them before they have the chance to kill us.” Patr eyed the weapons still hanging overhead. “No chance we could outrun them. They look fast as hellwinds.”

  “That’s reassuring,” Jess said.

  “You suppose if we wait long enough, they’ll go away?” Wraith asked.

  “They might. But they might just settle in to wait us out. They know we’re in here. They know we don’t have any way to get anywhere unless we go through them.”

  Wraith heard the clawing on the stone door again, and his skin crawled. “You’ve dealt with this sort of thing before, have you?”

  Patr nodded.

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Ideally, not to find yourself in this situation.” He smiled a little. “That not being an option, I recommend … hiding in here until they go away.”

  Then he shook his head from side to side, silently telling Wraith and Jess this wasn’t what he recommended at all. He pointed to the weapons above their heads and indicated that each of them should carry two, then pantomimed going out the door with both weapons drawn, firing at anything that moved.

  They can hear us? Jess mouthed.

  Patr nodded vigorously.

  And understand?

  Another nod.

  “I get the comfortable spot on the floor, then,” Jess said, and pointed to her choice for second weapon. Wraith reached up and handed it down to her. He grabbed one for himself, and Patr got his own.

  They eyed each other nervously, checked their weapons to make sure the charge bar showed full.

  When they were ready, Patr very, very slowly pivoted the security bar over from the closed to the open position. The red light at the top of the room went out. Jess jerked her head upward, indicating the light. Wraith could guess what she wanted to know: Did the things outside have any way of telling that the three of them were getting ready to come out the door?

  They won’t know, Patr mouthed. Security feature.

  That made sense, actually. They had the weapons and the safety rooms because this sort of thing did happen; it would only make sense that the wizards wouldn’t handicap themselves by designing rooms that would tip off the things that wanted to eat them as the wizards were getting ready to go out the door.

  Patr held up a hand, fingers spread. Five. He had his second weapon tucked tight to his side with his elbow. Wraith, closest to the door, put a hand on the handle so that he could swing it open. Patr would go out first, Jess second, and Wraith would bring up the rear.

  Patr tucked a finger in. Four.

  Jess wiped the sudden bloom of sweat from her forehead and readjusted her weapons.

  Three.

  Wraith’s blood pounded in his ears like a herd of mad drummers.

  Two. His hand tightened on the door, his muscles bunched, and he felt sweat slicking his palm. Jess bunched herself tight. Patr’s left cheek began to twitch, and his lips thinned into a hard line. In the instant before the final count, Wraith noted, surreally, the tiny burst of blood on the right side of Patr’s lip where he’d bitten into his own flesh without knowing it.

  One.

  For an instant, everything felt as slow, as silent, as surreal as that blood. Wraith opened the door and Patr lunged out of it, both weapons cutting arcs in front of him. Jess charged out in his wake and began shooting left—Patr moved to cover the front and the right. And Wraith raced behind them, not bothering to close the door, swinging around to cover their backs as they ran.

  That clarity, that logic and order, only lasted for one suspended instant, though—and then the world erupted into blood and screaming. The Scarred nightmares came at them, all claws and teeth and massive, muscled haunches; the beasts exploded when the spellfire hit them, and Wraith realized that they screamed words. “Mamma!” and “No!” and “Don’t kill me!”

  His stomach lurched.

  They moved along the slick cavern floor, a tight cluster that slowed to a walk as their feet hit moss-slimed stone. “Up the narrow stairs,” Patr said.

  “The narrow stairs?”

  “They only permit one human walking single file. They’re easy to defend—a bit nasty when you’re downhill having to move up, but these wide beasts won’t be able to navigate them, I think.”

  He no more than said it than Patr’s feet went out from under him, and one of his weapons spun across the cavern floor. He grunted, and one of the nightmares leaped at him, a giant bound through the air that would put it on top of him and its claws deep into his entrails. Jess gave a yell that ought to have stopped time itself and blasted the monster out of the air as if she’d been born to such things.

  “Good shot,” both men said, as Patr pulled himself to his feet.

  They left the lost weapon, and Patr led them to the stairs.

  “Where from here, though?” Patr asked.

  “We probably should have thought of that before,” Jess muttered. As they moved onto the comforting narrows of the steps, she handed one of her weapons to Patr, who still had point. In the middle position, she couldn’t fire in either direction.

  Wraith said, “We need to get to the best aircar we can steal.”

  “You can steal aircars?” Patr’s voice held a note of interest that was almost funny.

  “Magic doesn’t work on me,” Wraith said. “You could blast me all day with one of these things, and I wouldn’t notice, aside from the light.”

  “Damn. So you didn’t need to run from the rewhah?”

  “No. But I didn’t
want to sit in the arena, either.”

  “I know where the best aircars are,” Patr said. He blasted at something ahead of them, and Wraith heard a chilling scream.

  The run through the nearly vacant Gold Building was a nightmare. All that seemed to be left, aside from twisted corpses, were monsters.

  “The survivors will be in tomorrow to clean up,” Patr said. “They have a protocol for this. The place will be locked up tonight, and will probably receive a few blasts of …” He swore under his breath. “We need to get out of here fast. Blasts of sterilizing magic will be set to go off in here every hour on the hour. I don’t want to spend the rest of the day and all night in a safe room, and be here when the cleanup crew shows up tomorrow.”

  They ran.

  It seemed to Wraith that they ran halfway around the world. He’d always been a runner, but of late he’d lost the urge—and now his ribs ached and his side burned and he couldn’t catch his breath.

  They came out of the maze onto a roof, and on the roof sat a row of gorgeous, gleaming black aircars. Wraith chose the nearest, ran to it, and opened the door. He started the controls. Behind him, Patr swore. “I could have used you when I was a kid.”

  “I wasn’t stealing aircars when I was a kid,” Wraith said.

  Patr laughed just a little. “I wasn’t, either, but I sure as hells-all tried.”

  They were in the aircar, in the air, away from the Gold Building.

  “Where are we going?” Jess asked.

  Ever since Solander’s sacrifice, Wraith had been hearing two words in the back of his head. “Three Spears,” he said. “It’s a hunch, but I’m going to trust it. First, though, we have one place we have to stop.” He raced them through the city, finally dropping them to the ground on a quiet back street in front of a narrow, massively magic-shielded gate.

  Jess went pale as death as she recognized the gate. “Get me out of here,” she said.

  Patr nodded, but Wraith held up a hand. “Wait. I have something I have to check for. Drive back and forth along this road. Whatever you do, don’t stop and wait in front of the gate. If Solander succeeded in what he tried to do the night the Masters of the Inquest put us together, we’ll have a weapon in there that the Dragons won’t be able to stand against.”

  Patr and Jess looked at each other, and Jess took over the aircar controls. Wraith waited until they were well away from the gate, and then moved through it. First house up against the wall, he thought. First apartment on the right. Storage under the seating. Where he would find the details of Solander’s work, if Solander had succeeded. But Solander’s success while barred inside the cage of the Masters of the Silent Inquest was no given. And if Solander had failed, the survivors who might hope to save the Warreners were lost before they began.

  Wraith would have considered praying that it would be there, but right at that moment the gods—or at least one of them—seemed closer and more involved in his life than he felt comfortable with. What had been a sort of reflex in bad times for him now seemed like talking out loud in front of someone who might or might not be listening, and he wasn’t sure he always wanted to be heard. So he merely hoped that Solander had succeeded, and ran through the shadows to the appropriate door. It opened, of course. Why have locks on doors in a place where none of the occupants had free will, or initiative, or awareness of their surroundings beyond that which was permitted them? He went down the stairs, and found the family at home. The smells hit him first: sour sweat and the awful sweetness of Way-fare, and the closed, stuffy stink of tiny, crowded rooms that were never opened to fresh air. Suddenly he was a little boy again, trapped in a home where no one could see him, where no one would talk to him, where no one would hold him when he was afraid or hurt.

  The family didn’t look at him—they didn’t even twitch when he came through the door. They sat, eyes fixed to the flickering light in the center of the room, looking at the faces of and listening to the voices of their gods. Wraith got a chill when he saw the face of the god speaking at that moment.

  It was Luercas—a younger Luercas, but Luercas nonetheless.

  Of course the Dragons would do their own controlling programs. But he thought of his childhood, of sitting and watching the gods who spoke to him, of finding in them more comfort than he found in his own family, and he was filled with a hatred so vast and seething that he had to sit down for just a moment. He had worshiped his family’s torturers, enslavers, killers. His gods had been his owners. The men responsible for Shina’s death, for the deaths of other friends, for Velyn and Solander.

  His eyes blurred and filled with tears, his throat clogged, and he wanted to scream and pound the walls. So much had happened so fast that he hadn’t really been able to realize that Solander was dead. That Velyn was dead. The first real family he’d made for himself, almost all gone. The realization hit him with the force of a falling house, and he hurt so badly he couldn’t breathe. Blinded with tears, swallowing his sobs, gasping for air around the lump in his throat, he stumbled to the place where Solander and he had agreed Solander’s formulas and spells would be. He reached around, feeling for them, and came up empty.

  Failure. Solander’s magic was gone. The Dragons had won—for without Solander’s magic, Wraith and his fellow rebels had nothing with which to fight off the Empire. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and doubled over with his forehead pressed against the cool wall. His foot twisted, and he heard paper rustle. He froze. In a Warren house, there would be no need for paper. No one who could read, no one who could write. He wiped his eyes again, and caught his breath, and, when his vision was clear, looked down. Sheets of tan paper—large sheets, and glossy—lay scattered across the floor like autumn leaves after the fall. Across them, written in neat rows of Solander’s careful, back-slanted hand, were formulas and notations, discussions of variables and their effects, substitution charts, and spell after spell after spell.

  Wraith dropped to his knees and gathered up the pages as quickly as he could. He didn’t have to worry about interference from the Warreners; his presence would never register with them. But he did have to worry that Jess and Patr would be picked up by a curfew patrol; he could not imagine, after what had happened, the Dragons not declaring a state of emergency and closing down the Belows with a curfew. Until they came up with a good lie to explain away the visitation of a god and the rescue of the traitors by that god, the Dragons stood a good chance of having to fight off riots from one end of the Empire to the other.

  He tucked the papers beneath his shirt and took a steadying breath. He could be distraught and devastated on his own time, as soon as he had some. Right now, Jess and Patr were going to need him.

  Out the door, up the stairs, along the dead-empty street to the Vincalis Gate, and then through. He held his breath, afraid that Patr and Jess would have already been picked up and taken away, but no. They waited where he’d left them.

  He hurried to them. “Now we need to get to Three Spears.”

  Patr said, “That’s on Haffes, off of the Benedictan Peninsula.”

  “Why Three Spears?” Jess asked. “That’s … Damn. That’s Gyrunalles country. A hundred roving, warring clans, each with its own little king or queen, people who’d steal your eyes if you didn’t watch them, and some of the nastiest wizardry anywhere in the world.” She frowned at Wraith. “There’s a reason the Empire leaves Haffes alone. As long as the Gyrus have their own bit of land, they don’t come marauding elsewhere. They keep their wars and their flocks and their thieving at home.”

  “We’ll find help there.”

  “Are you sure?” Patr asked.

  “No.”

  “It will be the sort of help we’ll regret,” Jess muttered.

  “We’re going to have to fly shifts, and unless we go the long way, we’ll be spending the whole time over the ocean.”

  Patr and Jess both shrugged. “Why is that a problem?”

  Wraith said, “If the Dragons decide to stop travel between cities— and i
f I were in their position, I’d at least consider that an option right now—all they have to do is shut down power on the mage-routes. If they shut down power, then wherever we are at the time, we’ll go down.”

  Patr said, “We need to go the long way.”

  “The long way takes us along the most heavily traveled route in the Empire, at least until we get to Carse Cay in Benedicta. And even by the most conservative route, we still have … what? … seven water crossings. And … the longer we take, the more likely the Empire is to suspend travel. If we go at top speed, and straight there, we’ll cut about four hours off our flight. That might be enough to make the difference.”

  “And if it doesn’t?” Jess studied him with curiously calm eyes.

  “If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble. But if we go down on the main overland route, we’re going to be crashing in the middle of some of the most densely populated part of the Empire. And we are not going to have any friends there.”

  Jess nodded but said nothing.

  Patr was clearly considering all sides of the issue. At last he said, “I’m in for whatever route you want to take. Just steal us a faster aircar.”

  Luercas and Dafril met in the open-air market in Oel Artis Travia, the only part of the city not affected by curfews and identity checks.

  “My informant tells me the Council’s Grand Master has lost control,” Luercas said. “We may never have another opportunity as good as this one.”

  Dafril smiled gently and said, “We have a good team to finish this— top-level Masters with ambition and brilliant skills who have been bypassed by the current administration or who are in your position— simply out of favor. If the Masters of the Council commit to an insupportable position—if they overextend themselves—we have the perfect way to cut their legs from under them and come back in as rescuing heroes saving civilization for the world.”

  “If it works.”

  “It uses the same spell base we used when we … ah …transferred you. It will work.”

  “Maybe.”

  “If we disappear for five years while things go to the hells in the devils’ own wagons, and then come back—with new names, new faces, and completely innocent pasts—we’ll appear to rise out of the common people. We’ll step in to set the coming chaos in order, and we’ll reestablish the government, but with ourselves at the top. It’s the only way we’re going to end up in charge. You know this.”