Vincalis the Agitator

by Holly Lisle

  “We’ll be fine,” he whispered in her ear. He didn’t know if it was true, but he hoped it was.

  “I’m not worried about us,” she whispered back. “I’m worried about what will happen to the Empire when we do this. If we do this. All these people … where will they go? How will they eat? How will they survive?” She turned her face toward him. Now he could see nothing but the silhouette of her hair. “Can we do this, Wraith? Even being who we are, even coming from where we come from … can we do this? Is it the right thing to do?”

  Wraith squeezed her hand. In that moment, fully and completely, he realized at last that he loved her. She understood a thing he’d thought no one could understand: how he of all people could be ambivalent about what was to come. She understood—but more, she shared his ambivalence. His fear. He’d been silent about his anguish most of all on her account, for he could not help but remember that she—of all the people working toward the freeing of the Warreners—had the most right to hate the Empire that burned Warreners like cordwood, body and soul, for its convenience. To her he could never have expressed his doubts, for it seemed that by doing so, he would be questioning her worth. Her right to live. She had been one of the Warreners in a way he never had—she had been just a unit of energy to be counted and converted. She had earned the right to hate. But she did not hate—or, at least, she could still see parts of the Empire that had value, and she could still understand that innocents stood on both sides of the dilemma, waiting to suffer.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I have to believe we’re doing the right thing—that the destruction of souls must stop, no matter what the cost may be in bodies. I know there’s no good solution. I don’t know if this is truly the best solution. But it’s the best solution we could devise.”

  “Of course it is,” Patr cut in. “The Empire is evil—built on evil, full of evil. It has to end. How could you question that, either of you?”

  Jess and Wraith looked at each other, and Jess said, “How could we not?”

  Wraith caught a flash of light behind Jess and said, “We’re landing already.”

  Jess’s fingers felt like iron as they clung to his. “We could still turn back,” she said. “No one has had any time to do anything—we could still turn back.”

  The aircar thumped lightly on the ground—a mildly imperfect landing for a god, Wraith thought. And Patr charged out of their aircar first, running toward the one that had landed beside them.

  “I know where we are,” Wraith whispered to Jess. “This is the transmitting center for the nightlies. At this hour, everyone but the technicians who keep the transmission going should be at home.”

  “We’re where we are supposed to be, then,” Jess whispered back.

  “Yes—but not when.” He rose. He needed to go see if any of the Falcons had been able to figure out why Vodor Imrish brought them all here instead of taking them to the Warrens first. “Do you want to stay here?”

  “No.” Jess sounded emphatic about that. Well, he couldn’t blame her. He wouldn’t want to be the one sitting in the dark waiting for an explanation, either. They both got out. The aircars had all come down on one of the side landing roofs. Wraith saw that one of the Falcons had already tried the door and found it open. “Bad security,” someone said behind him.

  “Or the work of Vodor Imrish,” another said.

  They were all moving toward the opened door—the Falcons, their handpicked assistants, Patr. Wraith grabbed one of the Falcons by an arm and said, “Why is everyone going in already? You have to set the protective spells around all the Warrens first.”

  The Falcon turned to him. “We’ve done it. We’ve been working for hours, Master Gellas. It took my team far longer than we’d anticipated because something about the spell the Dragons had around the Warren in West Shadowfall interfered with our spell initially. It finally gave, and we were able to place ours, but—”

  “Hours?” Wraith couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Hours? That meant they had irrevocably cast the die. The Warrens were shielded, the magic was going to start failing all over the Empire, and all that remained was for Wraith to tell people to get out of the way, and then to follow his own advice.

  No turning back. No turning back. The impact hit him hard—all at once and all over his body. He looked desperately for a rest room as his bowels knotted and he clenched and fought a simultaneous urge to vomit.

  He pushed through the doorway into the transmission building, dove into one of the marked alcoves off the main hall, and found a privacy chamber. He barely made it.

  He retched and heaved and clutched his belly as everything let go. And then he vomited some more. Too much for one man—too much guilt, too much responsibility, too much hanging in the balance. Make it all not true, he prayed. Make the Warrens not true, make the fall of the Empire not true—simply change things to make them good. To make them fair, and just, and right.

  His body calmed, but the spasms left him trembling, sweating, pale. When he was done, he felt almost too weak to move. Feet milled about outside the door of the chamber he’d raced into—people worried that he’d lost his nerve, or his mind; he knew that with every minute he stayed, he raised the chance that all of them would be captured and taken away before they could accomplish the final—and now essential— part of their plan.

  He dragged himself to his feet, rinsed his mouth, and headed out. “I’m fine,” he said before anyone could question him. “Not over my illness, but I’m strong enough to go on.”

  The Falcons had cast a shield around the rebels before they went through the door. Now they began the process of undoing the magics that prevented anyone but authorized personnel from going into the sensitive transmission rooms. Wraith would have been able to pass through without this—but alone, Wraith knew he would not last long against more than one or two defenders. And no one knew exactly how many people would be in the transmission center at this hour.

  While the Falcons took down the Dragons’ barriers, their helpers readied weapons. They fully intended that no one would be injured— but in order to prevent the transmitter operators from making a heroic defense, the attackers needed to look like they were willing to do whatever was necessary.

  With stun-sticks and illegal mind silencers ready, they braced themselves to kick in the doors. The Falcons crouched to either side, chanting in whispers, offering their flesh and blood and bone and will as sacrifices for the success of the mission. Nothing happened. Wraith felt his heart racing. Jess stood by his side, tense and pale. And still nothing. Then, without a warning sound, without any apparent change, the two doors through which the attackers had to move glowed golden, and the Falcon nearest the door nodded. The attackers kicked in the door and poured into the room, weapons pointing forward and ready to fire, having no idea what they would encounter on the other side.

  Three young men and an older man yelped and leaped to their feet from comfortable, cushioned chairs, and bits of meals scattered in all directions along with plates and drinks.

  “Don’t hurt us,” one of the young men shouted.

  But the older was reaching slowly behind him toward a black switch.

  “Don’t touch it,” Patr said. “Don’t touch anything. I’m from the Silent Inquest—your chance to walk out of here instead of being carried out on a stretcher is directly related to your cooperation. If you do what we tell you, you’ll live. If you don’t—”

  “You’re the rebels,” the older man said. “You’re trying to destroy the Empire.”

  “Actually,” Wraith said softly, “at this point, we’re trying to save lives. Please move away from the transmission equipment.”

  The four men did as told, and the one helper who’d come along because he’d spent some time working in the transmission center said, “You stand on the dais across the room, Gellas. I have to override the transmission of the nightlies—when I give you the signal, start talking. People will be able to hear you.”

  “Are we s
afe from intrusion?” Wraith asked.

  Jess said, “The Falcons have us covered, but we need to keep this short. You have the right words, Wraith. Just don’t waste any time getting to them.”

  Wraith nodded, crossed the room, and climbed onto the dais. A transmission sphere hung in the air in front of him, glowing dully. He watched it, having no idea what he would say when he got the signal to go ahead. He had never been more completely without words in his whole life.

  Luercas wasn’t even paying attention to the nightlies on the viewscreen in one corner of the room. He’d decided to attend a party thrown by a number of the Dragons who’d assisted in the development and deployment of the Mirror of Souls. The party had turned into an orgy, and Luercas, who considered himself above that sort of behavior, amused himself by watching the people who would one day make up the reborn government of the Empire, and trying to figure out how he might gain some advantage from the couplings going on before him. So intent was he on matching names to partners and trying to recall if any contracts were being violated that he failed to note the abrupt cessation of a debate by two commentators on the state of diplomacy with Strithia. He did not note the silence; he did not note the abrupt appearance of a single gaunt, pale face.

  But others did. One woman gasped, “Oh, no, it’s started!” and pointed to the overhead display, and the orgy died an immediate and ugly death. Luercas saw Gellas’s face staring down at him, and he knew she was right. It had started.

  He wanted to stay—to hear what the bastard had to say, find out where the spells were going to fall, and why. But he knew he and these idiots might already be too late.

  “We need to leave now,” he said. “Bring nothing. You’ll need nothing.”

  “We haven’t had time to do a successful reversal yet. We don’t know how well the automatic search features work, or if the emergency low-power stasis feature acts the way it should!” someone called, but though he heard what the man said, he was already running for the pad where his aircar sat.

  To his surprise, Dafril caught up with him. “You were right,” he panted. “You were right to keep the thing ready.”

  “We aren’t all going to get there in time,” Luercas said.

  “You and I will get there in time. Everyone else will either make it … or not.”

  The two of them dove into Luercas’s aircar and Luercas slammed it to maximum acceleration—something that would make the manufacturer and the spell designers cringe, but some things could not be helped. His exquisite aircar would be his sacrifice to the exigencies of getting himself out of harm’s way at the best possible speed.

  “How long is the Mirror set to hold us?” Luercas asked.

  “Right now?” Dafril considered. “Ten years, so long as power remains steady. If there’s a drop below critical levels, it will go into stasis mode automatically and only return to active mode when the power comes back again.”

  “Stasis mode. I don’t like it. I would have liked an active power-source search feature better.”

  “But people would see it as hostile if it started melting down anyone who wandered too close to it. This way, it looks like a gift of the gods at best, and a nice piece of furniture at worst. And as long as we have the priests to protect it, we should be fine.”

  “I just don’t like the idea of the stasis mode.”

  “It’s nothing major, Luercas.” Dafril spread his hands wide and shrugged. “We won’t be able to communicate with anyone on the outside, but no one will melt the thing down for metal because they mistake it for a weapon. It seems the perfect way to deal with brief power out-ages.”

  Luercas looked at him sidelong. “I suppose. But with an active power-search feature, we would always be in complete control.”

  Dafril sighed. “It’s not an issue. The stasis feature is only there at all because I’m a worrier. I got to thinking about what might happen if the Dragons overused energy in fighting the rebels, and this seemed like a reasonable precaution. It will keep the lot of us alive, no matter what.”

  Behind them, the air filled with aircars all aimed toward the mainland, all streaming at fastest possible speeds.

  “Someone is going to notice this,” Dafril said suddenly. “Someone monitoring traffic is going to see the lot of us and send interceptors to investigate.”

  “Probably. But maybe Gellas will keep them entertained long enough for us to get all the way out of their monitoring range.”

  “Let’s hope he’s got a bit of theater tucked in there, then,” Dafril said, and smiled thinly.

  Chapter 26

  Amoment in time—crystalline, perfect, beautiful because it is true … honest … real. One moment, sliced thin as mountain air, held up to the light, examined with sadness, because it is the last—the last moment of its sort that the world of Matrin will ever know. Here—look.

  In the floating city nicknamed the Aboves in Oel Artis, the finest diamond in the crown jewel of the Empire, a girl accepts her first dance from a suitor in a hall with walls of midnight hung with stars, and all around the dance floor, men and women long past their first dance smile and glance at each other, remembering.

  In the underwater city of New Oel Maritias, the full-time residents of Kaldeen District debate, with passion and animation, the addition of a new wing of the city, outlying their own current edge district. They worry about the decrease of property values when they lose their unobstructed views of the sea, and want a setback for the closest new construction that is farther than visibility on the water’s clearest day, and they want a one-year study to determine the precise distance, and a moratorium on building until the distance is determined. The consortium of builders and potential buyers, on the other hand, wants to start building right away, and they don’t want the setback, which will increase building costs and make the addition less stable. No one is happy.

  On to the mainland now, where in the city of Tarz, the Festival of Remembrance is under way—men and women dressed as incarnations of Death, dancing in the streets, drinking, singing mournful songs, copulating in alleyways, visiting the Memorial Hall, where pictures of their beloved dead adorn walls. A vast citywide celebration, ironically, of the fact that they are all alive.

  Down to Haffes, off the western peninsula of Benedicta, where the clans of the Gyrunalles have met for the semiannual month-long Bride Trade, an archaic tradition in which those men whose wives fail to please them may trade them off to men from other clans, but only to married men who are also exchanging a wife. Trades must be one for one, but trades in series, in which a man from one tribe will trade his wife to a man whose wife he doesn’t fancy at all, simply because he can then exchange this second wife for the wife of a third participant in the deal, who has already made arrangements with him in advance—are common. Men put a great deal of effort into making their wives look good and themselves look unreasonable, in the hopes of getting takers. For the most part, the traded wives are as happy to go as their husbands are to see them go. Still, as with horse trading, people often end up a month or two later resenting the deal they had made. It is often speculated that the bad blood between so many of the clans might stem directly from the Bride Trade.

  Or it might be the horse stealing.

  One clan, and only one clan, is notably absent from the fields of the Bride Trade. The absence has caused a great deal of speculation.

  Onward. On the continent of Strithia, in a human town named Halles just beyond the edge of Strithian territory, in a tall black tower already ancient beyond imagining, ghosts of the future illuminate the carved inner walls, moving restlessly in search of a secret from the past, a secret that the tower has hidden since a time before men walked the surface of the world. These ghosts become especially active in moments just before disasters, but they have never been so plentiful as they are at this instant. Inside the tower, their presence and frenzied movement give the illusion of sunlight pouring down from the ceiling. Outside in the streets of Halles, no one notices, because it
is already daylight. Had it been nighttime on this side of the world, the people of Halles at least might have had some warning of what was to come. But they, like everyone else—or everyone else human, anyway—are oblivious.

  Deep in the heart of true Strithia, however, where humans may enter but may never leave, the pending disaster is no surprise. The Ska-ols offer sacrifice after sacrifice, building the power that will shield the essential parts of their empire against the onslaught that they know comes.

  And in the Dragon Council, back in Oel Artis, the Master of Research, sitting in on the emergency meeting that has been called by all the Masters, is recognized by the Landimyn of the Hars, who has demanded his place as true head of the Dragon Council for the first time in a hundred years—and the Master of Research rises to speak. She is closely watched by a man named Faregan, who has motives far removed from the good of the Empire.

  Around the world in this instant, children are born, old folks die, people celebrate and mourn, dance and grovel, pray and swear. Around the world in this instant, frozen for eternity like a gnat in amber, the world still holds the shape it has held for tens of thousands of years. This is the last instant in which that will be true. All moments lead to the end of a world, but some lead there more decisively than others. The next moment holds an irrevocable act. A misjudgment, perhaps, a mistake— or perhaps the will of gods bored with playing a game where the rules remain the same and the pieces fit too well. Even from the vantage point of gods, it is sometimes hard to find the one true cause of disaster.