Vincalis the Agitator (59 page)

Wraith dropped to his knees and gathered up the pages as quickly as he could. He didn’t have to worry about interference from
the Warreners; his presence would never register with them. But he did have to worry that Jess and Patr would be picked up
by a curfew patrol; he could not imagine, after what had happened, the Dragons not declaring a state of emergency and closing
down the Belows with a curfew. Until they came up with a good lie to explain away the visitation of a god and the rescue of
the traitors by that god, the Dragons stood a good chance of having to fight off riots from one end of the Empire to the other.

He tucked the papers beneath his shirt and took a steadying breath. He could be distraught and devastated on his own time,
as soon as he had some. Right now, Jess and Patr were going to need him.

Out the door, up the stairs, along the dead-empty street to the Vincalis Gate, and then through. He held his breath, afraid
that Patr and Jess would have already been picked up and taken away, but no. They waited where he’d left them.

He hurried to them. “Now we need to get to Three Spears.”

Patr said, “That’s on Haffes, off of the Benedictan Peninsula.”

“Why Three Spears?” Jess asked. “That’s … Damn. That’s Gyrunalles country. A hundred roving, warring clans, each with its
own little king or queen, people who’d steal your eyes if you didn’t watch them, and some of the nastiest wizardry anywhere
in the world.” She frowned at Wraith. “There’s a reason the Empire leaves Haffes alone. As long as the Gyrus have their own
bit of land, they don’t come marauding elsewhere. They keep their wars and their flocks and their thieving at home.”

“We’ll find help there.”

“Are you sure?” Patr asked.

“No.”

“It will be the sort of help we’ll regret,” Jess muttered.

“We’re going to have to fly shifts, and unless we go the long way, we’ll be spending the whole time over the ocean.”

Patr and Jess both shrugged. “Why is that a problem?”

Wraith said, “If the Dragons decide to stop travel between cities— and if I were in their position, I’d at least consider
that an option right now—all they have to do is shut down power on the mage-routes. If they shut down power, then wherever
we are at the time, we’ll go down.”

Patr said, “We need to go the long way.”

“The long way takes us along the most heavily traveled route in the Empire, at least until we get to Carse Cay in Benedicta.
And even by the most conservative route, we still have … what? … seven water crossings.
And
… the longer we take, the more likely the Empire is to suspend travel. If we go at top speed, and straight there, we’ll cut
about four hours off our flight. That might be enough to make the difference.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Jess studied him with curiously calm eyes.

“If it doesn’t, we’re in trouble. But if we go down on the main overland route, we’re going to be crashing in the middle of
some of the most densely populated part of the Empire. And we are not going to have any friends there.”

Jess nodded but said nothing.

Patr was clearly considering all sides of the issue. At last he said, “I’m in for whatever route you want to take. Just steal
us a faster aircar.”

Luercas and Dafril met in the open-air market in Oel Artis Travia, the only part of the city not affected by curfews and identity
checks.

“My informant tells me the Council’s Grand Master has lost control,” Luercas said. “We may never have another opportunity
as good as this one.”

Dafril smiled gently and said, “We have a good team to finish this— top-level Masters with ambition and brilliant skills who
have been bypassed by the current administration or who are in your position— simply out of favor. If the Masters of the Council
commit to an insupportable position—if they overextend themselves—we have the perfect way to cut their legs from under them
and come back in as rescuing heroes saving civilization for the world.”

“If it works.”

“It uses the same spell base we used when we … ah …
transferred
you. It will work.”

“Maybe.”

“If we disappear for five years while things go to the hells in the devils’ own wagons, and then come back—with new names,
new faces, and completely innocent pasts—we’ll appear to rise out of the common people. We’ll step in to set the coming chaos
in order, and we’ll reestablish the government, but with ourselves at the top. It’s the only way we’re going to end up in
charge. You know this.”

Luercas pursed his lips. “I don’t have to like it. I’m not comfortable with the technology.”

“You’re proof that it works.”

Luercas shrugged. “You don’t know what it feels like from the inside. To feel another soul still tied to the body that ought
to be yours. You don’t know the ghost rage, the nightmares, the compulsions … but if we do this, you will. And so will every
one of the people we take with us.” He looked away from Dafril, picked up a cluster of grapes, and stared at them as if they
held the answer. “When I’m alone, even now, I can feel the screaming.”

Dafril looked shaken. “Screaming? But the soul your body originally had is in the Warrens. It was a Warrener soul. It shouldn’t
be feeling anything.”

Luercas said, “Perhaps it resents being burned a bit at a time. The Way-fare may numb the body and the mind, but I promise
you it does not reach beyond physical space.”

Dafril stared at him, clearly horrified. “I wish you’d said something about this sooner.” He buried his head in his hands.
“By the Obscure, Luercas, I had no idea you could still feel that damned soul.” He looked up, then stared off into space,
thinking. “We’ll have to revise the design on the soul-keeper—the Mirror of Souls—a bit. We’ll add in a buffer spell. Something
that will prevent any communication between the displaced soul and the body—or maybe just a suppressor. Keep the original
souls in the bodies, but put them in tight cages.” He smiled, looking happier. “Don’t worry. It’s just a design problem. We’ll
have it worked out by the time we need it.”

In darkness a sleek stolen aircar lifted above the unnatural stillness that pervaded Oel Artis. Because of the state of emergency
declared by the Empire, alarms should have gone off from one end of the city to the other. City guards and Empire warriors
should have scrambled to intercept the aircar, Masters should have received notification of the breach, Inquisitors should
have readied their chambers to receive people who were undoubtedly traitors to all that the Empire held dear.

But none of these things happened. Instead, the aircar, carrying the three fugitives most wanted by the Dragon Council and
the Silent Inquest moved silently and swiftly to the south and west, out over the ocean. Unseen. Unnoted.

The touch of a god is a powerful gift.

In the Red Water Kingdom, the initial madness had died down a bit. Early that day, twice as many people as lived in the Camp
of the Red Water King had erupted out of a cloud-filled sky with a crack of thunder and fire that shattered the Bell of First
Voice and scattered goats, women, and warriors alike.

Of all of the recent arrivals, Sunsta Go-Lightly-Overland was first to get her bearings. Sunsta was Gyrunalle-born; she’d
left the Red Water Kingdom—a kingdom on wheels, but a kingdom nonetheless—to seek wealth and a future in the grand cities
of the Empire of the Hars, and while disconcerted at finding herself so abruptly back home again, she felt that her mode of
arrival would give her standing with the siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles that her Hars job as a census taker would
never have conferred. She promptly announced that she and her companions had been transported in the hand of the god Vodor
Imrish, who had claimed the lot of them as his messengers—and then gave her relatives and onetime neighbors the message that
the god Vodor Imrish wanted his messengers treated well.

Were not the whole lot of them glowing like small suns from the moment they arrived, and had the Bell of First Voice not shattered—a
clear sign of divine intervention—people might have been more skeptical. The True People had their own wizards, though they
held kings in much higher regard. Gods, though, still mattered in places like Three Spears, and though no one had heard of
Vodor Imrish, the majority were willing to give him a fair hearing—and were, at least for the moment, willing to consider
as a sign of favor the fact that the god chose their kingdom for this visitation instead of a rival kingdom.

The warriors, the women, the wizards, and even the king pitched in, putting out extra hammocks, sacrificing garden crops and
goats to extra dinners, and taking the newcomers into their wagons and the circle of their trust as if they were all as much
family as Sunsta.

She felt good about that. These were her people, and for all their terrible reputation among those who did not know them,
they had made a good showing for themselves. They had been hospitable, charming, and— at least so far—they hadn’t declared
undying hatred or war on anyone.

Sunsta at last fell exhausted into the hammock in which she and several sisters had spent many a childhood night. She was
home. And alive. Good things, these. The lapping of the waves on the beach in the bay just below the place where the clan
had stopped its wagons for the month, and the steady roll of the surf out along the point, soothed her. The singing of the
nightchukkar, low and melodious, made her for a few moments a seven-year-old again, and left her yearning for the bony knees
and elbows and hushed confidences of her sisters, now married and with wagons of their own, and children. The breeze kissed
her, sweet with blooming redweed and childbud. Home, which she’d been sure earlier that day she would never see in this lifetime
again; and family, glad to see her and willing not to ask too many questions; and the impossible, wonderful voice of the god
that still hung in her head.

Wait. Your time to leave this world has not yet come. I have much for you to do.

She still had a future. She had the promise of a god on that.

Wraith brought the aircar down in the bay near the one village where lights still burned.

“Why here?” Jess asked.

Wraith said, “It’s where we’re supposed to be. I don’t know how I know. I just know.”

Patr muttered, “I hate that mystical stuff.”

“Nothing but clear-cut, sensible magic for you, right?” Jess asked. Wraith heard a hint of sharpness in her voice. “Which
has been so good for all of us up until now.”

Wraith kept out of it. He floated the aircar up to the beach and grounded it, popped the nose door open, and got out. There
was this to be said for packing light, he thought: Unpacking didn’t interfere with the hunt for dinner. Or, in this case,
breakfast. Along the eastern edge of the bay, the first gray arrow of dawn cleaved sea from sky. Wraith thought it odd that
the village still had lights burning at such an hour. In his experience from traveling with the theater troupes, the Gyrunalles
started their days along with the sun or somewhat after it made some headway on its daily trek. He’d never heard of Gyrus
who beat the sun out of bed.