Vincalis the Agitator (41 page)

Faregan frowned and looked at the summons—which he had written himself—and then at the secretary. “If you’re certain, I’ll
be on my way. I have the summons, but if none of the Masters wrote it, then none of the Masters wrote it. This is a shabby
trick someone played on me, though.”

“I’m most sorry,” the secretary said. “The Masters apologized—they told me to tell you that they promise to find whomever
it was who played this trick on you.”

Faregan bowed. “Tell them they mustn’t worry about such a small thing when they have matters of great import to attend to.
I’m more than willing to find out myself who was responsible.” He bowed again and exited.

Behind him, the tea boy came out carrying the empty serving tray.

It was the funniest thing. Or not, perhaps, but definitely odd. Wraith had seen the same man with the shabby blue tunic and
the mismatched eyes twice earlier that day—once while he stood in the market buying himself a few fresh vegetables for his
dinner, and once as he was walking in the door of the Cinder Hill Theater. And now, going up his walk to his home, he saw
the man again—standing down the street a ways, and not looking at him, but still there, and unmistakable.

It’s just one of those odd coincidences, he told himself. I must pass the same people dozens of times each day, and the only
reason I noticed this man is that he is so shabby and his eyes don’t match.

He didn’t fool himself for a second. He didn’t believe in coincidence, and after his visits with both Velyn and Solander,
he had not one but two likely candidates to suspect of hiring spies. He couldn’t decide which was more likely, though: Luercas
had reason to hate him, but the Dragons, if they had any suspicions of Wraith’s activities or his true nature, had reason
to fear him. He thought he would rather be hated than feared.

He wondered if he should just walk up to the man and ask who had hired him. Or if he should hire someone of his own to follow
the man and find out who was watching him, and perhaps why. Or if he should decide that this was a very good time to take
one of his troupes on tour personally, claiming that too much work had left him in need of a rest and a change of scenery.

He lit the fire in his stove, diced his vegetables, put his steaming pot with a little water in the bottom on the flat stovetop,
waited until it boiled, then tossed his vegetables in. And all the while, he kept watch through the window. The man moved
away from the street corner, came up to Wraith’s house, and used one of the popular little hand-voxes to talk to someone.
Probably to his employer.

Wraith started running his day’s activities over in his head—he’d been in contact with his undergrounders on and off, but
since they were primarily his actors and other creative people, he didn’t think that would trigger any suspicion. He’d met
with Brother Lestovar briefly, but it had been to go over his newest grant to the Order of Resonance—that shouldn’t trigger
any trouble. Solander had been by the day before, and he knew the Dragons had been monitoring that, but they’d been watching
Solander, not him. And aside from that, he’d met with wealthy patrons of the theater, interviewed potential managers for the
New Brinch Theater so that he could transfer the current manager, who had done brilliantly, to the still-under-construction
Terus Theater in Terus, the fastest-growing city in Arim.

He’d done plenty that the Empire would like to know about, but he’d done it in such a way that it all looked innocent.

He hoped.

Had Velyn told her story to anyone else? Had someone decided that it merited checking?

His “family” in Ynjarval were living well, thanks to him. If anything happened to him, their source of income would dry up
like surface water in a drought. He believed he could count on them to protect him.

His employees received better-than-average compensation, interesting work, chances to travel if they so chose, and opportunities
to exercise their own creativity.

His friends shared dreams and passions with him, common loves and common hatreds. He could not see any of them betraying him,
even if they did find out the truth about him.

He had enemies, and from them he would expect anything—but he’d always been sure he knew who his enemies were. He’d done his
best to make sure none of them could hurt him.

And yet, as he leaned against the side counter in his kitchen, eating his steamed long beans and yam cubes, he could see the
man who had been paid to follow him setting up for an overnight stay—hiding up against the house in the shrubbery, with a
few little bits and pieces of magical apparatus that looked to Wraith like listening and viewing devices.

Charming.

Perhaps he should hire someone to kill the man and be done with it. Except he might not see the next one. And he didn’t want
to be someone who operated that way.

Early bed tonight, he thought. Early out of bed tomorrow. His first objective would be to find someone who could locate the
people following him and find out why they were doing this, what they wanted, and what it would take to get rid of them.

“I have not yet found your vowmate,” Luercas’s investigator said, “but I’ve found something that will lead me to her. And
I believe it has such value to you that I had to meet with you to tell you what I’ve found.”

They stood at one of the rails of the Rone Artis Memorial Starpark, looking down past the stars to the shore of the sea, which
glittered like a blanket of gemstones on that sunny day.

“If you’re wasting my time,” Luercas said, “I’ll throw you over. I feel unwell today—I would rather be anywhere than here.”

The investigator didn’t look worried in the least—though Luercas thought that more a demonstration of stupidity than confidence.
Luercas meant it when he said he would throw the man over. The rages held him firmly in their grip, and he found himself once
again yearning for his own body, for flesh unbound to the soul of some stranger.

“You’ll like this,” the investigator said. “I have a reliable source inside the Order of Resonance who swears to me that none
other than Gellas Tomersin hired men to kidnap Velyn from the boardinghouse where he paid for her to stay. And that the people
who took her were members of the underground that has been causing such trouble to the Council of Dragons.”

“Which would tie Gellas in with the underground.”

“It gets better.”

“How does it get better?”

“On the very night Velyn disappeared, and during the time that she was being kidnapped, guess who Gellas was having dinner
with?”

Luercas turned to face the investigator and in a low voice said, “I don’t like guessing games.”

“Gellas Tomersin ate dinner that night with Solander Artis, and Artis’s assistant from the Department of Research.”

Luercas smiled just a little. “They’re Tomersin’s alibi.”

“Yes.”

“Tomersin and Artis were inseparable from the time that Tomersin came over from Ynjarval. Skinny little bastard. And if they’re
both tied in with the underground, it would only make sense that they’d avoid each other most of the time.”

“The underground is trying to overthrow the government. They want to free the Warreners—they’re lunatics.”

Luercas merely smiled. “If both Gellas Tomersin and Solander Artis are involved in their activities, the more trouble they
plan, the better for me. I’d love to see both of them executed.”

The investigator nodded. “I can understand—if someone made off with my vowmate, I’d feel the same way.”

Luercas didn’t bother to correct the man’s error. He said, “Find Velyn for me, of course. But if by chance you or your contact
in the underground could funnel any information to me about just how exactly the underground plans to free the Warreners—or,
for that matter, how they’re keeping the city guards from collecting insurgents and illegal aliens—pass that on to me, too.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a generous credit tab. “And this is to thank you for your work so far. You were
right. That was worth getting out of the house to hear.”

Jess stepped out of the chartered aircar behind a dozen other passengers, wishing that she had been able to sleep at least
a little during the flight. “I’m going to hire an aircar to take me home,” she told Patr. “Listening to you snore the entire
trip over exhausted me.” She smiled to let him know she was teasing him. “I have several things I need to have you do immediately—essential
things. And we’re going to be incredibly busy the whole time we’re in the city. I expect to be working as close to night and
day as the two of us can manage. So if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to stay in my guest room this trip. You’ll be comfortable.
The room’s large and airy, and has everything you’ll need.” She gave him an apologetic smile. “Probably isn’t the way you
intended to spend your trip home—”

He waved off her apology. “I expected to spend my time acting in my capacity as your assistant. I knew you had a full schedule
planned. I’ll be fine staying at your place. Anything I can do to make your work easier.” His smile managed to be both tender
and concerned.

“Thank you.” Jess was relieved. “This is everyone I need to see while we’re here.” She handed him the list she’d put together
during the long flight. “You’ll be able to use the hand-vox for most of the appointments, but not for the one with Master
Gellas. He’s …” She shrugged and gave Patr an apologetic smile. “Well … Gellas is eccentric. He doesn’t use any magic in his
productions, and apparently not in his personal life, either. He can be a bit difficult to contact. So take care of that appointment
first.”

“First?”

“I’m going to be sleeping for a long time,” she said grimly. “You’ll have the time to do everything on the list. Oh, God.
I don’t have a bite of food in the house. There’s a grand restaurant on the corner that will deliver—tell them we’re going
to want a light meal for tonight, and one for yourself for this midday if you don’t want to take your chances while you’re
out … and, I think, something for early tomorrow morning. They’ll deliver, and it will be wonderful. Once we have a tentative
schedule of appointments, we can make better plans for the rest of the week.”

He looked at her and sighed. “You look positively gray. You’re running yourself too hard, and you aren’t paying a bit of attention
to your health.”

“I don’t have time.”

“You had better find time. You’re going to run yourself into your grave.” He glanced down at the list she’d given him and
said, “How can you hope to fit in meetings with all of these people in one week? Even if I can schedule them all on short
notice, how are you going to see them all?”

“I want to secure patronage from half the people on that list. I want to see if I can work out a deal with Gellas to use some
of our musicians in some of his productions, both touring and at home—I’d have to say that rated my first priority. And if
I don’t see the other half of the people on the list, I’m going to lose friends.”

“If they were really friends, you wouldn’t have to worry about losing them. They’d want you to catch up on your rest.”

Jess snorted. “You think so? Try it with your friends sometime. Come into town and don’t see the people you really like and
do see people you don’t like, but whose money you need, and see how long you have any friends at all.”