Vincalis the Agitator (34 page)

“I have not lived a respectable life, Wraith,” she said. “I’ve made errors. A lot of them. And he is the sort of man who is
willing to use every mistake I ever made against me. I would cost my family everything they owned if I left him without providing
the two children called for in our contract. And he has made sure that I will never be able to bear those two children, and
that I will remain forever his … his whipping post.” She stared down at her hands; Wraith could see that some of her fingers
had been broken before and had healed badly. He tried to understand how Velyn—who had never admitted to flaws or weaknesses,
and whose defining characteristic had been her absolute certainty that she was right—came to be so meek. So shattered. He’d
realized when she told him she would not take vows with him that he did not know her and had never known her, but now he was
looking at a woman so different from
that
Velyn that he was having a hard time seeing them as the same person.

Time changed people—he knew that. But it never changed them as completely as they wanted to believe; core parts of them remained.
He found himself staring at her, trying to find anything about her that survived of the woman he had once loved to distraction.

She started sobbing, her face buried in her battered, twisted hands, and he looked helplessly at Loour. Loour frowned, then
nodded and crouched beside Velyn. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. I have a good friend who does healing magic; we’ll
take you to him and get you taken care of. And while we’re doing that, Gellas can see about finding you a place to stay until
you get everything worked out.” She gave Velyn a little tug to help her to her feet and started steering her toward the door.
“In fact, I’ll get my healer friend to take a look at you and then come with us before the Board of Contract Review. He can
testify to the damage that has been done to you. If Luercas tried to kill you, you
cannot
be held to the conditions of your contract. I’m certain of that. And I would guess that, because he treated you like this,
the contract could be voided, or even terminated in your favor….”

Then they were through the door, and Wraith couldn’t hear any more of what Loour said.

He leaned against the wall and forced himself to breathe slowly.

Dan walked over to him. “I would guess that the man who treated her that way is on his way to being sent to the mines.”

Wraith shook his head. “He won’t be punished. He probably won’t even be fined. Loour wants to think that he’ll be made to
pay for what he did, but he’s a Master on the Council of Dragons, the head of the Department of Magical Research for the entire
city of Oel Artis, and if he was secure enough to do this to her, he has some sort of information about her that she can’t
let get out.” Wraith sighed. “Loour can take her before the Board of Contract Review, but at most they’ll request Luercas
to be present so that he can offer his side of the story—and then whatever he has been using against her will come out.”

“That isn’t right.”

“It isn’t. But if you think the most powerful people in the Hars play by the same rules as the rest of us, you’re dreaming.
And you aren’t going to be happy when you wake up.” He turned to look out the window— he had a good view of the street, and
his timing offered him one quick glimpse of Loour and Velyn getting into an airtaxi that had pulled to the curb.

Wraith got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn’t just the pain he felt at seeing Velyn so badly treated—it was
almost a premonition; he wished that she had not come to him for help, he didn’t want to involve himself in her problems,
and yet he could not see any way to be the man he was and still turn her away.

He leaned his forehead against the cool window and briefly closed his eyes.

She would not be able to go home. And when she had been to the healer, and had gone before the Contract Review Board, she
would most likely need a place to hide. A new name. A new face.

He knew how to arrange such things; he’d built quite a respectable underground in the last four years. He would be able to
move her away from the city, turn her into someone completely new, and—so long as she listened to the rules and followed them—protect
her from Luercas.

He wondered how well she would do with being told where she could go, who she could associate with, and how she could behave.
Had she been the old Velyn, he would have considered her hopeless. He couldn’t begin to guess what he might expect from the
new Velyn.

Wraith straightened and turned to Murin. “I need you to cover my morning appointments,” he said. “I’m going to need to make
sure that Velyn is adequately represented, and I’m going to have to see if I can find a good guest house for her to stay in
until this whole thing is worked out. I have a busy schedule today, but …” He shrugged. “For reasons I can’t even explain
to myself, I think I need to take care of Velyn and her problem first.”

Murin nodded. He could cover for Wraith without too much difficulty—he had done so on a number of occasions before.

“The big thing on the schedule today is the meeting to arrange a troupe tour of parts of Benedicta. Try to get them to agree
to Fourth Troupe—Fourth has been short on engagements since they got back from the Manarkan Coast tour. And see if you can
get a commitment for the full repertoire—I especially want them to get another run through
Prime and Nocturne
and
The Fall of the First Sun.
I know they’re going to want the comedies, but Fourth needs to be ready to take over for Third Troupe here when they finish
the tour. Third needs a break. And I don’t want them rusty on the tragedies.”

Murin nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Get us a good price, too.”

He left, regretting lying to Murin about what he would be doing— he would find representation for Velyn if she didn’t have
someone from the Artis family who would take care of her. And he would find her a good guest house. But it would be a guest
house from which she would be kidnapped once he and his people were out of the picture, on a night when all of them had good
alibis.

He would let Vincalis arrange her kidnapping; have Vincalis’s underground arrange a safe house for her; pick the team that
would pose as the kidnappers; decide which of his underground contacts to endanger with her presence. Which wizard to send
her to for a new face, a repaired body. Which town to hide her in.

And before, posing as Vincalis, he did any of this—before he let his heart and some emotion from his past make his decisions
in the present—he would have to find out how much he could trust her, because the second she moved into his underground, she
was in a position to betray him and everything he had worked for since he escaped from the Warrens.

If she could not follow instructions, if she would not hide, change who she was, or break all ties with her past, she would
destroy his work. His real work.

“Master Faregan, our first break in a long time.” The voice on the secret channel was soft, as if the speaker called from
a place where she might be discovered.

Faregan recognized the voice. “What break, Loour?”

“His old lover, now vowmate to none other than Luercas tal Jernas, came to Gellas for help today. Luercas had beaten her,
tried to kill her, by her account. And Gellas is going to help her.”

“Good. Watch him. See who he contacts. See if this stirs anything up.” Faregan sighed. “If anything interesting happens, let
me know in time for me to get everyone over there. We’ve been waiting a very long time for someone to make a mistake.”

Solander ran his final set of numbers on the test and leaned against the console. “Impossible,” he whispered.

His partner and fellow wizard, Borlen Haiff, glanced over from his own worktable, caught a glimpse of Solander’s expression,
and put his work down. “What happened?”

“It worked,” Solander said. “I just cast a four-input spell, and did not draw a single bit of magic from the grid. And you
want to guess my rebound level?”

“Standard four-input? Flesh, blood, bone, and life force?”

“Right.”

“Well … give me your energy input readings.”

“Three-twenty, three-eighty, forty, and two.”

Borlen hunched over his magic pad, scratching away with his stylus. “Duration?”

“Two minutes, no error.”

“Standard, then.” He scratched some more. “Using Devian’s Formula, you should have experienced
rewhah
at one-twenty-five RU, plus or minus ten. But from the look on your face, I’m guessing that your results were better than
expected.”

“Somewhat.”

“How much better?”

“Try zero.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Zero
rewhah
with a four-input spell. That can’t be. The input-output formulas don’t offer any parameters that would let you get results
like that. Maybe the guards froze or something and gave you errant results.”

Solander was grinning so hard he thought his face would split. “I just isolated the new law. I have it—this is the thing that
brings my entire new system of magic together.”

“What—you mean that fantasy theory of yours that magic can be done for free, without any
rewhah
? You’ve been working on that for longer than I’ve known you and haven’t gotten anywhere. If I were you, I wouldn’t put too
much hope into this single result; I’d be looking for the error in my instruments. Something shut down, something …”

Solander was shaking his head. “I’m telling you, this is it. I’m sure of it. There are things that you just know in your gut—you
can feel them fall into place, you can tell when you finally get it right.” He wanted to jump up and down and shout and throw
things around the workroom, and go out and race up and down the corridors of the Research Center screaming,
I did it! I did it! I did it!
He felt like he could fly. Actually, if this newest approach to the formula were correct, he might be able to fly. Damn.

Borlen sighed. “You’re obviously not going to listen to reason on this.”

“Reasonable men never changed the world. I’m going to.”

Borlen grinned at him just a little. “And
that
is why I work with you. Your modesty always leaves me in awe.”

“Shut up and let me show you what I have here.”

Solander spread out his sheets of equations on the main worktable along with his theory write-up and his ideas for applications,
and started walking Borlen through the points.

About halfway through, Borlen suddenly caught on. “My gods, Solander. I think I see what you’ve done here. You’ve used yourself
as the sacrifice, but you have eliminated any harm or offensive positions from the spells. Completely. You’ve developed an
entirely defensive system of magic. And you can generate additional power …” He was running his finger across the lines of
figures, squinting a little at Solander’s tiny numbers. “Yes. By banding together groups of wizards who each volunteer their
own power into a common pool for a common goal.” He lifted his head, stared off into the distance with an odd expression on
his face, and seemed to Solander to go off into his own world.

After a moment, Solander said, “What is it?”

Borlen raised a finger, a “wait a minute” sign. His eyebrows furrowed and a tiny vertical crease appeared between them. “Mmmm.
If the numbers are right …”

“What?”

Borlen went scurrying for another sheet of paper, spread it out beside Solander’s work, and said, “Application. Idea. Just
a moment.” He started scrawling numbers and symbols across the page, checking his work, erasing, writing more—faster than
Solander had ever seen him do anything. Borlen was steady, but until that moment Solander would have said he was not built
for speed. And all the while he muttered. “No … that wouldn’t work, but maybe … Right. And … No. Damn! Need three times more
power, but …” And then he grew very still, and very quiet, and for a moment his eyes closed. Solander watched him, fascinated.
Seeing Borlen work hard was such a miracle he almost thought he ought to call a few of his fellow researchers in just to witness
it, in case it never happened again. Then the eyes opened, and the hand started moving again, and in complete silence Borlen
sprawled an equation across the page that showed such brilliance in concept that Solander felt a stab of envy.