Vincalis the Agitator (4 page)

Rone Artis cleared his throat—evidently he’d been standing in the doorway for some time.

“Are you ready?” his father asked, and Solander, guilty of all sorts of disobedience in his heart, nearly jumped out of his
skin.

“Sorry,” he said, scrambling to his feet. Solander gathered all three balls and the cord with a single mental swoop. He began
spinning the balls in the air, concentrating on their differing weights and masses, and the very different composition of
the cord. “This is what I’ve been working on most.” The balls swam like fish through the air, forming the test patterns perfectly;
the cord played counterpoint, weaving its way through each of the prescribed forms.

Out of the corner of his eye, he finally saw a small smile on his father’s face—the first one in a long time.

V
incalis Gate—a lesser gate, unfrequented, unimportant, mostly unnoticed—led to a place no one wanted to go. Its broad arch
sat next to a narrow, rarely used thoroughfare, providing a comfortable, hidden perch for anyone agile enough to clamber up
to it and slender enough to lie across it without sticking up above the little parapet. It was Jess’s favorite perch. Jess,
tiny for her age and whisper-thin, could lie along its gentle curve and watch the wondrous traffic that traversed the cloud
road to the Aboves, and the occasional pedestrians who passed on the walkway beside her from mysterious points of origin to
mysterious destinations, and wonder at the world outside of the gates … a world denied to her by tradition, by law—and by
the murderous gate that only Wraith could pass at will.

Wraith, who dared challenge the gate, told her about what lay beyond her narrow view, and she loved to hear his stories. More
than anything, she yearned to move from the dreary, dead confines of the Warrens into the living world beyond.

And where was Wraith?

Jess dreaded giving him her bad news—and at the same time, she feared that this time something had happened to him, and that
he would not come back. That she would have to face—alone—the choice between Sleep and death.

She’d lain across the arch, watching and waiting, all of the previous day and most of this one. She’d returned to the basement
the night before only after dark, when she felt safe on the streets, and resumed her perch along the arch at first light.
The guards who patrolled the Warrens never paid much attention to anything around them, but in daylight accidents were much
more likely to happen, so she only moved in darkness.

Now, thirsty, hungry, and worried, and with the sun dropping toward the horizon for the second day—with still no sign of Wraith—she
contemplated her choices. She tried to imagine stepping into one of the homes, taking a bowl from the dispenser, pouring in
the Way-fare, and eating herself into oblivion. Her memories of her time in Sleep were vague—little flashes of conscious desire
to move, to breathe, to act, to escape, that lay in the middle of vast, deep, ugly pools of nothing. The Sleep terrified her.
But she didn’t know if she had the courage to choose death. Already, she felt the burning in her gut that the few bites she’d
allowed herself from the last crusts of old bread, doled out over two days, did nothing to assuage. How much worse would the
pain be in four days, or in ten? How long would she take to die?

And then, movement down the narrow road. In the twilight, she could not at first be sure the boy was Wraith, though he was
thin enough. His way of moving was right, but his clothes were all wrong. And he carried an enormous box with him. She wondered
what it was— he had never brought anything with him that he could not hide beneath his shirt. This he carried openly.

But it was Wraith. She checked on the street behind to make sure the Warren guards were nowhere nearby, then shinnied down
the arch, dropped to the low roof of the guards’ shed, then lightly to the ground.

Wraith came through the gate, heralded by the usual explosion of light, and said, “Quick. We need to get out of sight. I have
wonderful news.”

And I have terrible news, Jess thought, but she kept her silence and ran beside him. Her news would become obvious all by
itself, and if she did not need to crush his apparent joy right away, she would not. She loved him, and she loved this new
smile he wore on his face, and this air of excitement that he carried in his step.

They ran down their street, ducked into their stairwell, and squeezed through the broken window into their hideaway.

Boxes and crates stacked along all the walls and in the middle of the floor, a dirt floor with a little nest of rags for sleeping
on, and darkness, always, because they did not dare any light to call the guards’ attention to their presence—this was the
home that was, to Jess, freedom and life.

“Where’s Smoke?” Wraith asked, putting his box on one of the crates. “He has to be here to hear this, too.” And without waiting
for an answer, he handed her something beautiful, and cool, and smooth, and round, and said, “Take a bite. It’s the best thing
I’ve ever tasted in my life.”

She took a bite and almost cried. It crunched, and its juice burst on her tongue, and its sweetness seemed to her to have
not just smell and flavor, but color and sound as well. She took another bite, and the sweetness began to mix with the salt
of her tears. Smoke would have loved this thing, whatever it was.

“Great, isn’t it?” Wraith asked, grinning.

She swallowed around the growing lump in her throat and put the round thing aside. “Smoke is gone,” she said.

Wraith’s smile vanished. “Gone? The guards found him?”

“He … he gave up. He said you couldn’t provide for two of us anymore—that we ate too much and that trying to keep us both
fed was killing you. And he said I was the smallest and I ate the least, so I had to stay, and he would go back. He ran out
of the door. I chased him, but he runs faster than me, and I don’t even know which of the homes he went into.”

“When?” Wraith whispered.

“Right after you left.”

“Then he’s been asleep for two full days, and then some.”

Jess nodded.

“Too long. And he’s too old now. If we tried to take him away from the Way-fare again, this time it would probably kill him.”

“If we even knew where to look for him.”

“Yes. That, too. He would still be easy to pick out—he won’t start actually looking like them for months. But where would
we start looking?”

“He didn’t want you to find him. He didn’t want to be a burden anymore.”

Wraith’s face wore anguish. “But I found us a way out. All of us— you, me, and him. I found us a home, a place where the three
of us can live, where they serve food this good and better several times a day, every day, and where they walk in the streets
whenever they want, and wear different clothes every day.” He buried his head in his hands. “Why couldn’t he have just waited?”

“He’s been talking about this for a while now,” Jess said. “He made me swear to keep silent; he worried for you, that something
bad would happen to you because of us. I’ve worried, too, but I was too much of a coward to do what he did and go back. If
I weren’t so weak, I would have just gone to Sleep one day, too—and then you wouldn’t have had to risk the gates anymore.
You could have stayed out there, where it’s wonderful.” She whispered, “But I miss him.”

Wraith had his knees pulled tight to his chest and his face pressed into them. He sobbed. Jess sat beside him for a long time,
patting his back and stroking his hair. “He wouldn’t have gone if he’d thought you would ever find a way out of here for us.
He only gave up because he could see us getting you killed, and for nothing.”

“Never for nothing,” Wraith said between sobs. “What I do for you is never for nothing. You’re my friends. You’re my family.
You’re all I have in the world.”

“That’s why he went back,” Jess said softly. “Because he loved you.”

He looked up at her. In the dark, she saw the gleam of his tear-filled eyes and the pale blur that was the rest of his face.
He looked haunted, haggard. Despairing. “I can’t go to get him, Jess. After my brother, I swore I would never chance killing
anyone else. He’s already had the Way-fare in him for too long. I can’t get him back. And I won’t try. I won’t kill him, too.”

“He knew that. He knew when he went.”

“But we’re going to get out of here, Jess. And someday, I’m going to come back, and I’m going to find a way to free everyone
who’s in here. Every single one.”

She held his hand and nodded. “You will. I know you will. You can do anything, Wraith.” And then she hugged him, and prayed
that once they were free of this place, he would never look at the Warrens again. She would miss Smoke; her heart ached for
him, and for the knowledge that only two days had stood between him and hope.

But the Warrens had a poison to them, a creeping, insidious evil that she could feel hanging in the air, leaching the life
out of her day by day by day, and she feared that if Wraith didn’t get away and stay away, he would at last fall victim to
that poison.

“Grath Faregan, bound and blindfolded you come into this chamber to take an oath—to swear fealty not to magic, and not to
the government of lesser men, but to the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest. We hold the reins of the world
in our hands, and you have, by word and action, proven that you deserve to be one among us. Before you passed through the
final doorway, you were told that you could only pass through it again in one of two ways—either as our friend or as a corpse.
Do you acknowledge that you came here of your own free will?”

“I do,” the bound man said.

“Will you take the test of loyalty?”

“I will,” he said.

“Know that if you fail, you will die—and your death will be terrible. You still have the option of a quick and merciful death,
should you so choose.”

“I’ll take the test.”

“Very well.” Two men removed the bonds from Faregan’s hands and the hood from his head. Shackles still held his ankles to
the dais in the center of the floor.

He could see nothing beyond a brilliant light that poured at him from all directions. He lifted his chin, and took a deep
breath, and waited.

From all sides, then, spells attacked him. He knew that under no circumstances could he defend himself in any way or resist
or reverse what was done to him. He proved his loyalty by proving he acceded to the will of those above him, whoever they
might be. But when his body caught fire, he needed every bit of his control to let himself burn. He screamed, he fell to the
ground—but he did not use the power at his disposal to put the fire out.

He smelled his own flesh burning, and he wept, and he pissed himself from fear and pain—and then, suddenly, the ordeal ended.
Though he still had pain in his right leg, in every other way he was fine.

“Stand,” one of the voices from the darkness said.

He stood. The right leg screamed, but he bore it without a whimper. No signs of piss, no signs of fire, no smell of smoke
or roasting skin.

“Repeat after me: I am a friend of the Inquest, a brother of the Secret Masters of Matrin, and I acknowledge no power save
that of the Master of the Inquest….”

Faregan repeated the words.

“No god, no vowmate, no child shall come before the needs of the Inquest….

“No life shall be sacred, if I am ordered to end it….

“No law shall be sacred if I am ordered to disobey it….

“From this day until death, the Secret and Honorable Society of the Silent Inquest is my first family, my first love, and
my sole master, even to death.”

As he finished repeating the oath, a voice said, “The brand on your leg is your mark—the mark that you are chosen. Your life
is bound to it—if you deface it or remove it, you shall in that instant die. You are ours, and we are yours. And together
we rule the world. Welcome.”

The bright lights went down, and a cluster of old men moved around him, and hugged him, and gave him the clasp of family—right
hand to right hand, third and fourth fingers curled tight to the palm.

Faregan wept with the joy of it. He was one of the Masters of the Inquest at last. As low in the order as a Master could be,
but still a Secret Master. Time and good fortune would carry him higher, he thought. And if it did not, still he stood among
the only men in the world he had ever cared to join.