Vincalis the Agitator (18 page)

She bled, he bled, the two of them had to look like something from the lower reaches of hell, and all he could think of was,
Am I covered by the city employees policy for the magework that will repair all of this, or is the cost of repair work for
my injuries going to end up coming out of my pocket?

He felt guilty that he could not grieve for Rone Artis. Of Rone nothing survived but a bit of ash and a few scraps of bone
that had fallen far enough from the main blast of the
rewhah
that they were not consumed; the brand-new Grand Master of the Council of Dragons had died bringing energy to his city. Died
badly. Luercas thought he should have felt more than a dull, angry distaste for the man.

Rone would get the gods’ serving of attention when the news came out. The city had all the energy it could use—more energy
than it and another five cities like it could use. Rone had not died in vain, and because of that, the magic he had done would
be done again, and again, and again. Certainly the use of the spell—the clever soul-spell—would get safer. And Rone would
become a hero. That, at least, was to the good. If Luercas and Maidan played the game right, they would be heroes, too.

So Luercas, who wanted only to lie in something cool and soothing while waiting for someone to come and make better all the
awful things that were wrong with him, headed to Artis House on the periphery of the city, dragging his fellow hero-to-be,
to make sure that he announced the death of the most important man in the city to that man’s family first. That was, after
all, the right way to do things. He would do his duty. He would accept his kudos as gracefully as any shy and retiring debutante,
and then he would reap the rewards.

He figured, once he’d had the magework to repair the damage from the
rewhah,
he could ride this thing at least as far as a high seat in Council. Beyond that, he’d have to succeed on merit—but he had
plenty of merit, too.

Wraith and Velyn and Solander and Jess arrived in the meeting room from opposite ends of the house but at almost the same
time; Wraith saw Jess look from him to Velyn, and watched the expression on her face turn from worry, to hurt, to something
he didn’t quite recognize. She turned her attention to Solander, and didn’t look back at Wraith again as they took their seats.

A very junior member of the family stood on the dais, waiting. As new groups moved in, he kept asking, “Anyone higher than
a Four clearance can take over from me. Four? Anyone?” And then he’d wait, and the next handful of battered, shocked-looking
people would make their way in, and—ever hopeful—he would ask again.

His relief when a gray-haired Artis—Master of the House Watch—finally came through the door was so palpable that Wraith almost
laughed. “Master Tromiel, Master Tromiel, so
very
glad to see you. Please, you’re the ranking member of the family; you need to take the census and determine our course of
action.”

And Tromiel, whose bruised face, torn clothing, and cautious, pained movements hinted that what he really wanted to do was
sit down, nodded with the grace of a statesman, walked instead to the dais, and took the place of the nervous young man. Wraith
heard him say, “How are we doing so far?”

“Badly,” the young man said softly. “You’re the only person here so far who can actually make a decision for the whole family.
I’m Level Four, and I was ranking until you came through the door. And this is everyone—I haven’t sent anyone out on reconnaissance
yet or to look for survivors. I would have had I remained the ranking member, but …”

Tromiel glanced around the room, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glaze. Then he nodded slowly. “You did well. We’ll wait
a few more minutes, get our count, and then set up a communications station in here and send out parties to find survivors.
You’re my assistant.”

The young man nodded. “Yes, Master.”

Wraith, as a newly minted and untried adult, held a rank of One, which was at least better than his previous child-rank of
Zero. This new rank, however, meant he was going to be taking orders for a while. He and Solander both, most likely. He suspected
that Velyn held a slightly higher rank, but she’d never done any of the favor-mongering that tended to win rapid in-family
promotions; she would most likely be slogging it, too. Jess, technically still a child and unranked, would probably find herself
in one of the nurseries baby-sitting younger children. That would probably infuriate her.

Wraith tried to focus on the good news—that all four of them were alive—but his mind kept wandering to the inevitable bad
news and wondering how bad it was going to be. Those watery hands hammering on the glass, the city being shuttled to the surface,
the absence of most of the adults in the family. In a room that should have held seven hundred Artis adults, he so far counted
just over thirty. What had happened to the city? To the people? To the surface of the sea?

And then two monsters dragged themselves through the door. One, scaled and horned and black as sea sludge, covered with bleeding
crusts and twisted in ways that made each of his movements like watching the unfolding of a broken ladder, dragged the second,
who still had a bit of the recognizable human about her, but who seemed to be now a bag of jelly poured into a stretchy and
shapeless human skin. A few people screamed softly and got smaller in their chairs. Others stared and paled or whispered to
those seated beside them. Solander turned to Wraith and murmured, “Ah, no … this is going to be a nightmare.”

The black, scaled monster dragged his companion to the dais, climbed with agonizing slowness to the top of it, put the jelly-creature
down, and turned to the Master. “I have news,” he said.

With horror, Wraith realized that he recognized the monster’s voice. In spite of all the rest of the damage, the creature’s
vocal cords and lips still worked right. Wraith tried to comprehend the truth—that bastard Luercas, who had tried to force
him to bow on their first meeting and who had hated him and harassed him ever since, existed now inside that magic-twisted
casing. Wraith had a hard time not feeling that justice had been served.

“Tell us,” Tromiel said.

“I know you can’t recognize me, but I am Luercas tal Jernas, the son of Emi Artis and Gregor tal Jernas, and I am also an
associate attached to the Department of Energy. I have come to bring you the news that Rone Artis, the new Grand Master of
the Council of Dragons and Master of the City, is dead.”

Wraith’s gaze slipped sideways to Solander, whose face had gone slack and pale.

Luercas continued, “Last night, we discovered that the periphery of the city had gone underpowered and was on the verge of
collapse. Rone Artis could have waited to get extra help, but had he done so we might have lost the whole city and everyone
in it. Instead, he dared to bring a new source of power on-line, and by doing so, warded off the collapse of the Polyphony
Center and the resultant chain reaction of depressurization of the city that would have killed us all. However, when he brought
the new power up, he couldn’t handle it alone, and it killed him and nearly killed Maidan and me.”

A new source of power. Wraith had no doubt about what that was. The city of Oel Maritias was now burning souls. He wanted
to be sick.

He glanced back to Solander and saw his friend shaking, white-knuckled, white-lipped. And Wraith, who wanted to scream that
justice had been done—that people who would burn the souls of innocents deserved to suffer or die—remembered that Solander
had been close to his father; even the revelation of the day before that his father’s activities fell outside of any acceptable
standard of behavior had not diminished the Dragon in Solander’s eyes.

To Solander, this was not justice served for evil done; this was, instead, the destruction of his hopes. He loved his father,
even though he sometimes feared him. He admired Rone Artis, too, had wanted to be like him, and when Solander discovered what
sort of magic his father did, his first hope had been to take Rone aside, and ask him about his work and how and why he chose
to do what he did. Solander wanted to hold on to the good in his father. He wanted to understand, to find some extenuating
circumstances, some mitigating factors for the horrible magic his father chose to do, that would allow him to keep the man
who had always been his hero on a pedestal.

With Rone dead, all hope of understanding and making peace with the man his father had been died.

Luercas was still talking. “Rone Artis risked everything to save the people of Oel Maritias,” he said. “He lost his life,
and we’ve suffered tremendous damage—but the new power is on-line and running now. We have enough magic to repair the city
and drop it again to the sea floor. We have enough power now to make it safe. He did this for you— for all of us. Rone Artis
was a great man, and it was an honor being his associate, his friend, and at the end, his protégé. Maidan and I wish we could
have saved him. We weren’t strong enough, but we tried.”

Wraith listened to Luercas’s words, but he watched Solander’s face. Solander loathed Luercas. Now Luercas stood before these
few people, eulogizing Rone, calling Rone a fallen hero—and in the same breath nominating himself for the role of still-living
hero. For if Rone, who had sacrificed his life, was a hero, then surely both Luercas and Maidan, who had suffered such physical
torture, must be heroes, too.

Solander looked at him, and the pain in his eyes had been erased by anger. “That bastard Luercas—middle-level wizard bent
on aggrandizing a dead man in the hopes that some of the glory will reflect off of him secondhand.”

Wraith nodded. “I know.”

“It will, too. He’ll be a dorfing Master within two years for this—just watch.”

“Not if we tell the people of the city how this happened to him.”

“Won’t make a difference,” Solander said bitterly. “They’ll never believe it without proof.
I
wouldn’t have believed you without proof, and you’re my best friend. You’re talking about trying to sully the reputation
of the
Dragons
. The people who make cities fly, give free food and shelter to the poor, and keep the night streets so safe that in most
places, a three-year-old could wander them alone at night and the only thing that would happen is someone would notice and
take him home. If we say,
Well, yes, that’s all true, but they’re burning the souls of Warreners to do it,
do you think anyone in the Empire of the Hars Ticlarim would believe us? Do you think, even if they did believe, that they
would
care
? The people of the Empire have been trained to hate the Warreners, and even better, they’ve been trained to fear them. So
if the Dragons are doing something to the people in the Warrens, citizens are going to say,
A good end to wickedness,
and that will be the end of that.”

Wraith could almost see the future sprawling before him—the Dragons would cry loudly that Rone Artis was a martyr, a man who
had given his life in the search for knowledge, and they would demand that knowledge so dearly gained could not be ignored
or wasted. They would disguise their greed and callousness and hunger for more and more readily accessible power as carefully
as they disguised the source of that power, and they would talk of bringing the most good to the most people with the least
cost.

And they would never count the cost, because neither they nor anyone they loved would ever pay it.

Wraith could not permit them to lie to others. To lie to themselves. To disguise their evil behind a pretty face. He’d thought
that he would let Solander discuss the issue with his father before he decided on his own course of action, but now all of
that had changed. This disaster in Oel Maritias, and the “salvation” of the new source of magic that would prevent the city
from going underpowered again would alter the face of the Empire; he had to be ready.

He wished that he could do magic, that he could fight directly against the people who were destroying the Warreners for their
own gain, but such wishes were worse than useless, because their self-pity occluded real actions that he could take.

But what could he do? He’d spent his time learning philosophy and history, writing, poetry, doing equations for theoretical
magics that he could never test. He had no skills as a tactician or a warrior. What did he have? He had to have something
that would let him fight this horror.

He’d missed the end of Luercas’s speech. Now Tromiel was standing on the dais, listening to a wild-haired, blood-smeared young
woman who seemed to be stuttering and crying at the same time.

At last Tromiel held up a hand and called the gathered survivors together. “We’re getting reports in from the Polyphony Center—some
people there dead and a lot more injured and trapped in rubble. We’re going to need everyone who is healthy and strong to
start digging them out.” He pointed to Solander. “You’re Rone’s son, aren’t you?”

Solander, thin-lipped and pale, nodded.

Tromiel said, “I know you are going to want some time to yourself, son. That was a hellish loss—your father was a good man,
and we won’t forget him, and we won’t forget what he did for us. But working will help you to ease your pain. The living need
you now. The dead will understand—sometimes they have to wait.” He returned his attention to the assembly. “I’ll remain here
with a few of the older children as runners. We’ve not yet established contact with Oel Artis, but we will. In the meantime,
I need a single detail to go from room to room in Artis House and find anyone we’ve missed. Three people, one with healing
magic skills.” Somewhere behind Wraith, hands evidently went up, for Tromiel pointed and said, “Yes, you three. And you”—he
pointed to his assistant—“you’ll be liaison between here and the servants’ census. As soon as they check people off, get them
down to Polyphony. You and you”— he pointed to Velyn and Jess—“will take over in the main nursery. Reports are that the children
are a bit battered, but none died. They’re frightened, though, and they need some of their own with them right now. You may
keep a servant with you to assist, but we can’t spare more than one. Keep the children busy. Find useful things for them to
do, and let them know they’re helping. Don’t let them have too much time to wonder about their parents. We’ll have family
come for them as we … find them.” He stared down at the floor for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked up again. “The
rest of you go to Polyphony now. In emergencies, we have no rank or class—you’ll will work with whoever will help you and
get our people to safety. We’ll get everyone out of this city and back to solid ground as quickly as we can.” He rubbed his
eyes. “One final thing. Stay away from the windows. Something is wrong with the water, and until we know what it is and how
to deal with it, we don’t want to … ah, antagonize it.”