Vincalis the Agitator (30 page)

She thought of Wraith, and for a moment she had to fight back tears. When he told her of his plans for the future, he had
been sharing his dreams and his passion with her, and he had wanted to include her in those dreams.

She took a deep breath. Wraith was an idealist. A fool. A child who did not belong in the life he was living, and who would
sooner or later misstep, and be found out, and take down not only himself but everyone around him. She was better off without
Wraith.

She watched the starsetters lighting the stars all across the yard—the great sweeps of a nebula spinning beneath the house
itself, the arms spiraling out, and comets and shooting stars and glorious arches and sprays of light spun out above, so that
the guests would dance on air, with stars beneath their feet and stars over their heads. She wished she could appreciate the
beautiful effect. She wished …

But she did not wish for anything save that she get through this night and its attendant challenges without embarrassing herself.
She had kept most of her sexual conquests well away from home and from the Aboves, but a few still hung on in the house, and
any of them might come out and join in the crowd of well-wishers and make sure that they said something to Luercas in front
of her that would cause her embarrassment.

Her father had often told her, “Live your life so that you can tell the worst thing you’ve ever done in front of the people
you respect the most, and still hold your head up after.”

Unfortunately for her, she hadn’t liked her father, so she’d spent a great deal of time and effort living her life in a way
that would cause him as much humiliation as possible. Now, however, she discovered that he was old and truly didn’t care anymore,
but she still had to live with everything she had ever done—both the things that people knew about and the things that they
didn’t but that she had to dread them finding out about. Her father’s advice suddenly made a great deal of sense, but she’d
come to that realization far too late to do anything but wish she’d liked him more when she was younger.

Her mother came out onto the balcony and stood beside her. “They’ll be ready for you in a few moments, you know.”

“I know. I was just watching the starsetters. Don’t you wish sometimes that you could do that?”

“It’s common labor,” her mother said, and shrugged. “They make a pittance for their work, and can only enter the Aboves with
passes. If they lived a thousand years they could never hope to live here.”

“I just thought what they were doing was lovely.”

“Of course it’s lovely,” her mother said. “Elsewise we would not have hired them. Come in and change—I have your outfit ready
for you.”

“What do you think of Luercas?” Velyn asked her.

Her mother shrugged. “He came highly recommended. Beyond that—he’s rising through the Dragons quickly, his family has a great
deal of money, and he’s presentable. What else do you want?”

“A friend? A companion?”

“Why? We were careful to negotiate your vows so that you will be able to pursue as many ‘friends’ and ‘companions’ as you
choose, after the two of you produce two healthy children.”

“I love feeling like a breeder,” Velyn muttered.

Her mother glanced sidelong at her and said, “And if I had not been willing to feel like a breeder, you would not exist, and
you would not be heir to a sizable estate. If you don’t have children, you cannot pass on the estate within the family. Lineage
matters.”

Velyn had to wonder why. At that moment, so much of everything her family believed in and stood for seemed pointless. Her
parents had given birth to her and her brother because they needed to designate two heirs in order to make certain investments
and to own certain pieces of property; those who could not guarantee continuity could not be entrusted with great treasures,
since without continuity those treasures could fall into unworthy hands.

She had been born for financial purposes, and her own children would be born for the same financial purposes. She had no real
desire to try out motherhood. She’d thought about it, but had discovered too late—that is, once she’d signed all the papers
with Luercas—that she’d only thought about it when she was with Wraith. Now, facing a future in which she
would
give birth to two children and the father
would
be Luercas, she found herself facing the miserable truth that she did not want what was coming.

She tugged off her clothing, and put on the soft black robe that her mother handed her. She wrapped the silver, gemstone-beaded
girdle over it, and her mother cinched the girdle tight. Her mother unwrapped the crown of stars, a tiny magic-spelled clip
that pinned into her hair and created dancing pinpoints of colored light all around her head and shoulders.

Her mother stood back and studied her for a moment, and then she smiled. An actual, genuine smile—and Velyn thought she could
count on the fingers of one hand the times she had seen a real, human smile on her mother’s face. “You look very pretty,”
she said. “And your father and I are both quite … pleased … yes … pleased with you. You’ve grown up a bit.”

Velyn managed a smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. She knew in her gut that in going through with this, she was making a mistake;
she didn’t know how that mistake was going to manifest itself, but she didn’t doubt for an instant that it would. But her
parents were pleased with her. She could not remember the last time she had heard that.

Someone tapped on the door. “Everyone is ready,” the muffled voice on the other side said.

Her mother drew herself erect and said, “Well, then. Shall we go out?”

Velyn couldn’t back out. The contracts were binding—if she went into breach, she and her parents would be liable for vast
sums called restitutionals, punitive fees that the reneging party paid. Luercas and his parents would walk away with property,
money, and an increase in their societal rank that would come at the expense of her family, which would suffer a compensatory
fall in rank. She would take her vows, then, and she would have the two children required of her.

She lifted her chin and nodded. “Let’s do this thing,” she said.

The two of them went out the door side by side and down a long and gleaming corridor. They met Luercas and his father at the
back of the Treaties Hall, and the four of them walked up the center aisle between the two long banks of feast tables together.
When they came at last to the patriarchs of the Artis and tal Jernas families, who sat side by side in the center of the head
table, Velyn’s mother and Luercas’s father stepped aside.

Velyn and Luercas walked the last three steps together, but they did not touch, they did not look at each other, they did
not even truly acknowledge each other’s presence.

Wraith would have held her hand. Would have smiled at her, whispered something to her to ease the tension in the room, would
have, perhaps, commented on the ludicrous clothing that most of those present to witness the final act of the nutevaz wore,
and in doing so he would have made her laugh.

She did not think that Luercas would ever try to make her laugh; she doubted that he much valued laughter.

The two patriarchs rose and spread the presentation copies of the vows before the two of them on the table. This step was
really just for show—the real copies had already been signed and sealed and filed. Velyn held her ground; she would get through
this.

The tal Jernas patriarch spoke first. “Today the contract you two have sworn and attested to becomes binding—you have both
vowed that from this day forward, for a period of one hundred years, you will share common property, common space, and the
rights and duties of common life as stolti within the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim. You further agree to fulfill your familial
obligations to present to the stolti for confirmation two infant heirs in good health, of sound minds and bodies, on the first
day of their fifth year….”

He droned on. Then the Artis patriarch took over, going over the details of their contract, making what was private public
so that it could be more easily enforced.

Velyn started feeling sick. She looked around at the people seated at the banquet table, at the witnesses who had come to
give the vows social binding. And Wraith was at one of the far tables, sitting passively, his face a blank mask, watching
her.

No. She had thought that she would not have to see him again outside of polite trips to his theater. She had never thought
that he would exercise his right to come to her vows ceremony. She had been sure, in fact, that he would stay away—that if
he had heard of it at all, he would be so hurt, so crushed, so devastated by what he had thrown away that he would not be
able to bear his grief. She’d harbored fantasies that he would be so wounded by her quick recovery and by the brilliant contract
she’d taken that he would come to her, begging to be let back into her life on whatever terms she was willing to offer.

That face staring at her without emotion was not the face of a man who had come to beg.

She turned back to the patriarchs, back to her decision, back to the cold, self-absorbed Luercas, and the tears began to slide
down her cheeks. She didn’t move to wipe them away; she kept her back to all the people who had come to bear witness to her
stupidity. She would not let them see her behaving in this fashion. She stood a little straighter, and breathed as steadily
as she could, and pulled her shoulders back. She held her birthright as stolta. She belonged in this house. She belonged in
the Aboves. She was not—would never be—some parentless Warrens rat, some young opportunist who’d found shelter and safe haven
among generous and unsuspecting people, and had then gone on to take advantage of them for years. She ought to turn around,
point to him, and say, “He’s really from the Warrens. He doesn’t belong here.”

Except, of course, if she said that, it would mean that she knew. It would mean that she had kept this information from people
who would have wanted it—and that would put her just one step above Wraith. She wouldn’t be taking vows anymore—but she wouldn’t
be living in the Aboves, either. At barest minimum, she could look toward being banished to one of the outlands and living
on a remittance. At worst, she could find herself working the mines, stripped of her birthright, no longer a stolta. The stolti
covered for each other—but they did not stand for betrayals within their own ranks.

She said nothing. Sooner or later the truth about Wraith would find its way to the right ears; when it did, she would pretend
to have been just as taken in by him as everyone else.

Wraith watched her take her vows, and felt the last shreds of hope that he had clung to shrivel and blacken within him. He’d
known when she told him that she would never take vows with him that he had to let her go—but some part of him kept hoping
that she would come to him, that she would tell him she’d made a mistake, and that she wanted to be with him for the rest
of her life, and that if it wasn’t safe for the two of them to take vows in a grand public ceremony in Oel Artis, that they
could travel to someplace where no one checked papers very carefully, and where they could promise themselves to each other
with only paid witnesses.

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.