Vincalis the Agitator (53 page)

Patr had been right: Everything he’d ordered arrived, including a small, decrepit aircar that Jess doubted would carry them
much farther than to the village and back—if that. She said as little as possible to the villagers who brought things into
the house; she busied herself in finding places for the food, the furniture, the few small amenities that Patr had managed
to acquire for the two of them.

The little viewsphere surprised her. She’d never given much thought to the nightlies, but considering her status as a fugitive,
she thought she might do well to see if she and Patr got any mention.

As they sat eating a dinner badly cooked over fire, with food much stronger in flavor than any she was accustomed to, Patr
turned on the viewsphere, and the nightlies sprang to life in the tiny room. And she saw the roundup of Wraith, Solander,
the Kaan, the initiates of the Order of Resonance, office personnel in Wraith’s several theaters, lower-level wizards who
had worked with Solander….

She stopped eating, put bowl and fork on the table, and stared. People she knew flashed onto the screen, telling unimaginable
lies about a huge conspiracy to destroy the Empire, overthrow the government, and place the playwright Vincalis—whom the nightlies
had dubbed “Vincalis the Agitator”—at the head of a new world order that forbade magic, made men and women live like animals,
and would bring misery, starvation, and war to this peaceful place. She clenched her hands into fists and ground her teeth;
she stared from the images to Patr, and helplessly back at the travesty before her, and when the lies were done, and the Empire’s
plan to eradicate art and artists in the name of safety and to turn everyone against each other as they sought to win some
ludicrous reward for their treachery became clear, she closed her eyes and wept silently.

“Madness,” she whispered.

“Not at all,” Patr said. “What they’re doing will serve any number of larger purposes. All sorts of dissidents will be shoved
out into the light of day, and from the Empire’s standpoint, if a few innocents—or many innocents—get caught in the same net,
what of that? There will always be more innocents; the Empire makes them every day. Further, the Masters of the Empire can
instill a great deal of fear and respect with very little effort, simply by publicizing the executions and making sure that
everyone knows the search for traitors is ongoing, and that everyone is more or less a suspect. Third, by leaving Vincalis
the Agitator at large in the public mind, people no longer trust their neighbors and friends—and no new conspiracies will
have good ground in which to grow for a long, long time.

“When the Dragon Council made its deal with the Silent Inquest to hunt you people down and turn you over to them, I’m sure
they had just this sort of sweeping power grab in mind.”

“What did the Dragons pay you for this? What is the price of all these lives?”

“A favor,” Patr said with a tiny smile. “A favor to be named later.”

“Please tell me they don’t intend to execute everyone they’ve taken. Not really.”

“They’re planning mass executions. I doubt that anyone they’ve taken in will live—and the more they know, the more I’m sure
they’ll be killed.”

“But they have Solander … and Wraith … and so many friends, so many of my friends, so many actors and dancers and singers
and writers….”

“They don’t have you,” Patr said.

A week passed, and in that week the nightlies showed a steady stream of conspirators confessing. And each night, the commentators
discussed not only the confessions, but their import: how the success of the conspiracy would have led to famine, plague,
genocide, wholesale destruction of the Empire, its citizens, and their children. Vincalis—Vincalis the Agitator, the conspirator,
plotter, devil spawned to destroy the hopes and plans of millions of innocents—stayed at the center of the nightlies’ coverage.

Special investigators sat with the commentators, discussing methods of ferreting out traitors, of recognizing people who might
have passed as solid citizens but who lived secret and dangerous lives beneath the surface. Masters of wizardry described
the real danger that unsanctioned methods of magic posed to the Empire’s power delivery structure, and ultimately to the very
existence of the Empire. Wizard trackers displayed some of their methods as they attempted to use their magic to locate the
elusive Vincalis.

Among the population, interest became obsession and obsession became dread as the coverage wore on, and in the streets, both
spontaneous and orchestrated marches calling for the deaths of all the traitors began erupting throughout the Empire.

In the second week after the arrests, power outages in a poor section of Oel Artis caused the deaths of hundreds of mufere
and parvoi citizens when the river that the magic held back flowed into the homes at night, drowning everyone in that district.
Vincalis and his traitors took the blame, and the Silent Inquest rounded up another hundred people from around the city and
herded them into the Gold Building. These “conspirators” were never even questioned—they were, instead, moved under cover
of darkness to the Warrens.

No one mentioned that the part of the city drowned had been fighting eviction notices and demolition orders for more than
ten years, or that the Masters of the City wanted the land for special waterfront resorts of their own. No one seemed to notice
that the people who just vanished, taken in by the Silent Inquest—which was working as the secret right hand of the Dragon
Council—had nothing to do with the arts, that they were all small property owners who held land in coveted locations.

No one questioned the Dragon Council. No one questioned the hysteria—at least not publicly. No one stood up to the Masters
of the City. Citizens from one end of the Empire to the other kept still and quiet and hoped that no fingers would be pointed
at them. Which, of course, was exactly what the Masters of the Dragon Council wanted.

Master Grath Faregan stepped into Wraith’s cell and sat on the bench that ran the length of the wall opposite him. “I hear
you’ve had much to say,” he said. “That you have requested an audience. I find myself with a bit of free time, and a little
curiosity about what you might have to say. Would you care to enlighten me?”

Wraith nodded. “I’m Vincalis,” he said. “There isn’t anyone else. There’s no mysterious master conspirator, no one who is
waiting out there to strike and destroy the Empire. There’s just me.”

Faregan said, “Quite a few of your colleagues have also confessed to being Vincalis. Rather generous of you all, considering
that when Vincalis is brought before the people, it’s likely that he’ll be burned alive, or perhaps ripped limb from limb.
Public sentiment isn’t running much in his favor these days. Funny how people forget how much they loved all those little
plays when they think a man’s been plotting underneath it all to murder their children.”

“But I never plotted any such thing. I wanted to free the Warreners, nothing more. The Dragons are burning their souls as
fuel for the Empire; they can’t be permitted to do that. But Solander came up with a form of magic that would permit civilization
to continue, and neither of us would ever have permitted harm to come to the Empire’s citizens.”

Faregan glanced at him, started to say something, stopped himself, and then shook his head and laughed. “Gellas, you probably
are Vincalis, for what it’s worth. I thought it likely when we brought you in. No one has traced any of the work directly
to you, and you were careful enough that we could never prove anything … but that knife cuts both ways. You can never prove
anything, either. And for our purposes, that’s infinitely better.”

Wraith frowned at him, not understanding. “Why?”

“If you’re Vincalis, then the threat to the Empire is over as soon as we execute you. People go back to life as it was—they
resume their dayto-day activities and expect all the details of their lives to return to normal. But your … well, your
experiment
in conspiracy has highlighted a few weaknesses in our system, and in order to patch them, we’re going to have to do away
with some privileges that people currently consider rights. In order to do that, they have to perceive a threat to their lives
and the lives of their children, and they have to think that the government is the only entity that can protect them from
that threat. And as long as ‘Vincalis the Agitator’ is free and causing problems, we have our necessary threat. The Dragons
can eliminate rights with impunity, increase surveillance on the populace as a whole—including the stolti class, which has
until now been terribly resistant to such invasion—and increase revenues while we do it. Less for more.”

“That’s evil.”

“That’s government, my boy. Government is all about its own survival; it’s as much a living, breathing entity as any snake
… and much more cold-bloodedly deadly.” His smile turned sly. “Meanwhile, as we play along, acting the part of the Dragons’
allies, the Silent Inquest has its own agenda. We increase our pressure on the Dragons—the Masters of the Silent Inquest watch
even them. Once the hysteria is at its highest peak, we intend to put a few Masters into the uncomfortable position of being
discovered as part of your conspiracy. We’ll supply all the evidence to the public and the rest of the Masters simultaneously
to prove that these few chosen ones were deeply involved. Once the Dragons find them guilty—as they must after all their public
outcry—and once they hold the necessary executions, we’ll prove to the survivors how vulnerable they have become to their
own hysteria.” He laughed softly. “And the remaining Dragons will be more than willing to fall in line with our objectives.”

Wraith’s head hurt. “You want people to die.”

“The right people—yes. That shouldn’t surprise you.”

“It doesn’t. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

The old man laughed. “Such cynicism. Well, you’ll live, boy. You’ll be our permanent guest … and at some point you’ll probably
wish we’d killed you with your friends. But you’ll live. I have a team of the Inquest’s private researchers flying in to convene
here. Once the executions are over, they’ll begin studying you. If we can acquire your immunity to magic, the Dragons will
have no hold over us at all—and control of the Hars will once again reside with us.”

Wraith turned away. “No truth will stop you. No pleading will stop you. The innocence of your victims won’t stop you. What
will
stop you?”

Grath Faregan raised an eyebrow. “Something bigger and meaner than us, boy. That’s the only thing.”

He rose and said, “If you truly are Vincalis, let me say that I did enjoy your work. You were a talented writer. Pity for
your sake you didn’t find an acceptable outlet for all that talent—but your … ambition, for want of a better word, worked
out well enough for us. I won’t see you again. You’ll attend the executions as a guest of the Inquest, and then you’ll go
to your new home, which will be your last home. You have any last thing you want to say to me?”

Wraith turned and stared at him. “Only that this won’t be the last time we meet. If you hurt my friends, I’ll walk through
seven hells to come for you.”

Faregan nodded politely. “I hear that a lot, actually.” He bowed slightly. “I offer you my best wishes, then, and take my
leave.” Suddenly he stopped. “One thing. Every time I’ve met you, I’ve had the nagging feeling that we’d met before. Why is
that?”

For just an instant, Wraith managed a thin smile. “You really don’t know.”

“No. But don’t think you’ll win any concessions by withholding the information. I’ve lived this long without it. I won’t lose
a minute’s sleep if you don’t tell me.”

“I don’t imagine you lose sleep over anything, you lizard. But I’ll tell you. You met me for the first time in the Oel Artis
Travia fresh market, where I was attempting to steal food for my friends.” Wraith’s smile stretched fractionally. “You tried
to stop me with magic. And you failed. So you tried to have me killed. You failed again. And you know something? I think you’re
going to fail this time, too.”