Then, as he bolted toward one great house, he saw that its owners had not worried about a physical gate with bars and spikes.
Instead, the archway lay open. No doubt the invisible gate would be as formidable to most people as one of the tangible ones—but
not to Wraith. He put on a burst of speed and threw himself through the opening. Cool fires of a hundred hues played across
him, as they had earlier when he’d entered the gate that led to the Aboves—but those fires did nothing to him.
A boy of about his own age—stocky, blond, elaborately dressed— had been entertaining himself in that yard, sitting in a comfortable
chair with his feet propped up, making three gold balls and a bit of rope spin through the air. The boy jumped at the flashing
lights, and stared as Wraith lunged at him and said, “Hide me.”
The boy gave one startled glance at the gate. But then he nodded and pointed Wraith to a tiny house with its own cloud-spun
path that hung in the air almost against the wall.
Wraith didn’t ask questions. He didn’t let himself look down. He just ran.
The little house had, thank all the gods, a real floor. It held a table and four chairs, shelves full of books and jars and
paraphernalia that Wraith couldn’t begin to identify, and on the floor dozens of dolls and brightly colored blocks and wheels
and balls. It consisted of one room, a door, and four small round windows set a little lower than Wraith’s eye level. He crouched,
and through the window that faced back the way he had come, he watched the boy, pointedly not looking at the little house,
return to his activity of making all three balls hover in the air while the string braided itself between them.
The guards stopped outside the gate. Two of them stared at the little house. The third glowered at Wraith’s unexpected ally.
“Where is the little bastard?” the head guard asked.
The boy rose, not yet acknowledging any of the guards, and pointed to the translucent yard. All three balls spun neatly downward
and settled into a line there. When he had summoned the rope to himself and it had wound itself around his arm as if it were
a living thing, he turned and slowly walked to the gate. “Perfann, do you know to whom you are speaking?”
The guard ignored the question. “Master Faregan told me to catch that little thief and—”
“My name is Solander Artis,” the boy interrupted. “Son of Rone Artis.
Artis,
perfann—which should have some meaning even to one of Faregan’s men. And this is
Artis
House. So … now that you know to whom you are speaking, would you like to reconsider your … presence?”
The guard’s ruddy face bleached the color of bone. He said, “My apologies. I would not bother you. But a thief escaped from
the market, and Master Faregan has demanded that we …” He paused, considering his words. “That we capture him and remand him
over to Master Faregan for questioning.”
“A worthy thing, no doubt,” the boy Solander said. “And had he come into my yard, I would without hesitation turn him over
to you. But no one has come through the gate. It’s armed, and since I did not wish to be disturbed at my studies, I did not
unarm it. Did you notice anyone trying to cross an armed gate? That’s a fairly obvious thing.”
“Well, we saw the gate light up … but we saw the boy on the other side.”
“You saw the gate light up.” The boy smiled coldly. “And the gate is armed, and there is no boy. I can only reach one conclusion
from that, perfann. I suggest you tell Master Faregan that the thief died trying to escape; in a fashion, perhaps justice
has been served.”
The three guards stared from the little house in which Wraith hid to the boy who faced them at the gate, then back to the
little house.
“I saw the gate light up,” one of them said.
The other two both nodded and agreed.
“So he couldn’t be alive.”
“But I swear I saw him running on the other side.”
The one in charge shook his head. “Can’t have. He cooked in the gate.”
The three of them stood there staring at each other, and Wraith sensed that they had come to an agreement before the other
two spoke. When at last they said, “Yes,” and “There’s no other possibility,” it was merely formality. The head guard nodded
to the boy Solander and said, “Then we thank you for your time, and we apologize for the disturbance. We will be on our way.”
And they left. Solander stood at the gate for a moment, watching them get on their skimmers and leave. Then, a thoughtful
expression on his face, he turned and strolled down the path to the playhouse.
He came in and sat down, and for a moment said nothing.
“Thank you,” Wraith said. “You saved my life. Those three had orders to give me to the market wizard—he said he wanted to
take me apart to see what I was made of.”
“Really?”
Wraith nodded.
“What did you do?”
“I’m not sure. I went through the market like the other people in the square, and put food into a basket, and left out the
same gate through which they all left, but when I left, someone shouted that I was stealing food.”
“Did you lose your credit amulet?”
“My what?”
The boy reached into his shirt and from beneath it pulled out a small white disk on a gold chain. “This. What happened to
yours?”
“I don’t have one of those. What does it do?”
“Takes money from your family account to pay for whatever you purchase. The shields around each business are spelled to read
your amulet and …” He shook his head. “You should know this. Why don’t you?”
Wraith shrugged. “We have no credit amulets in the Warrens. No open markets. And what are shields?”
The boy sat down and rested his elbows on the table and his chin on his fists. “Why would you have been in the Warrens? No
one goes there.”
“I live there.”
“With the riots and the murders and the mind-drugs and the crime lords and the prostitutes and … I’ve seen the nightlies.
None but criminals live there.”
Wraith tried to figure out what Solander was talking about. “You must have heard of a different place. That’s nothing like
where I live— the Warrens are the quietest place in the city.”
“If you lived in the Warrens, you wouldn’t be here,” the boy said. “Because the Warrens are gated to keep the criminals in;
you couldn’t have gotten out. And you certainly couldn’t have come to Oel Artis Travia.”
“I just walked here. Walked out of the Warrens, too.”
“How?”
“The same way I ran into your yard.”
“The gates in the Warrens are malfunctioning, too? My father will have a fit. He’s going to be upset enough that something’s
wrong with our gate. Lucky for you those guards didn’t try it.”
“The Warren gate worked the same way all gates work for me. I can walk through any of them that don’t have real locks on them.”
The boy shook his head. “Nonsense. I saw you go through the gate. It lit up, but it didn’t do it right.”
“They always look like that when I go through them.”
Solander thought about this for a moment, staring down at the floor and frowning. “You mean our gate might be working? If
I’d told the guard the gate was malfunctioning and he’d tried to cross, he might have been killed? Oh, hells, I would have
gotten into trouble for that.” The boy gave Wraith a speculative look, and then a tentative smile. “My name is Solander Artis,”
he said.
“I know. I heard you tell the guards.”
“Now you’re supposed to tell me your name.”
“It’s Wraith.”
“Wraith what?”
“Just Wraith.”
“That’s a funny sort of name.”
Wraith shrugged. “I liked it. That’s why I picked it.”
“You picked your own name?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s different. Wraith, I want you to show me how you got through our gate.”
“All right.” The two of them rose, walked out into the yard together, and after Solander checked to see that no one who mattered
was looking, Wraith walked through the gate. The lights played over him—and then he was on the other side. So he turned around
and walked back.
The boy frowned. “That can’t be. It looks like it’s working, but … Wait right here. I have to go get something. Don’t go
anywhere,
” he said, and raced to the big house.
Wraith waited, and waited, and at long last the boy came racing back, carrying a small bag full of greenish lumpy balls.
“You took long enough.”
“It’s a big house,” the boy said, “and I had to get the testers out from under the watchman’s nose without him catching me.”
“Testers?”
“Gates only attack living human beings. Otherwise, they would have to be constantly raised and lowered for deliveries of supplies
and other things that come via mage-carts. Pets and birds and other wildlife wouldn’t be able to pass through them, either,
and the families do love their deer and peacocks and griffonelles. They’d be most upset to find their expensive pets roasted
by a gate. So it used to be that the only way to test a gate was to shove a prisoner through it. Only now prisoners are used
in work gangs, and they’re too valuable to just roast; so the wizards had to develop gate testers. You throw one through,
and the gate thinks it’s a person who isn’t supposed to be there, and …” He pulled one out of the bag. “Here. I’ll show you.”
He tossed the ball through the gate. The lights erupted again, but this time, along with the light, Wraith heard an eerie
hum, and the ball stopped dead in midair, turned a brilliant glowing red, and exploded into dust with a crack so loud and
sudden and emphatic it made both boys jump.
Wraith closed his eyes. He’d seen the gates work on something other than testers before, and all because of his stupidity
in thinking that if he could walk through them, anyone could.
“It’s working,” the boy whispered.
Wraith nodded. “They always are, I think. Gates just don’t work on
me
. The man in the market who sent his guards after me pointed his finger at me first, and the same sort of light came out of
it. But that didn’t do anything, either, though I’m pretty sure he expected it to.”
Solander leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. “Oh, dorfing hell-dogs! Master Faregan took a shot at you and it didn’t
do anything?
Drowning
dorfing hell-dogs! No wonder he wanted his guards to grab you.” He stared at Wraith, his expression an eloquent testimony
to awe. Without another word, he traced a short series of loops in the air. To Wraith’s amazement, a line of light glowed
in the air in the wake of the boy’s finger. “Cover,” the boy said.
The loops coalesced into a thin, wavering sphere of light that bobbled through the air to Wraith, touched him … and popped
like a soap bubble, disappearing without a trace.
“How did you
do
that?” Solander asked.
Wraith said, “I didn’t do anything. I don’t do anything when I go through the gates, I didn’t do anything when that man pointed
his finger at me and hit me with light. I don’t
ever
do anything.”
“Would you walk through it for me one more time? I want you to carry a tester with you and see what happens.”
Wraith nodded. Solander handed him a tester, and Wraith walked through the gate. Lights crackled and hummed around him, the
tester exploded in his hand with a heat and a force that scared the breath out of him, but as before he remained unscathed.
He turned around and stepped back through the gate again.
The boy looked pale. He said, “Let’s go back in the playhouse to talk. I’m not due for lessons for a bit, and none of the
juniors will be out in the yard until after midmeal. Once they get out here, the place will be hell, but for at least a while
we have it to ourselves.”
They both returned to the little house and drew up chairs, and Solander leaned his elbows on the table and said, “I’m the
only child of Rone Artis, who is one of the top Dragons in the world, and Torra Field Artis, who is the daughter of one of
the great wizards of all time. Qater Field—you’ve heard of him?”
“No.”
“Of course not.” Another exasperated sigh. “No matter. According to my parents—hells-all, according to everyone—I’ll become
a powerful wizard when I grow up, because I already show incredible talent and aptitude, and have remarkable visual-spatial
memory, and … I don’t even remember all the things they say. But if they’re right, I have a good chance of ruling Matrin.
I can already build minor gates of my own. But
I
can’t walk through a gate untouched. Neither can my father. If wizards could cross armed gates, the gates would be worthless.
You have something special going on with you. And I want to find out what it is, because it has to be important.”
Wraith said, “All I want to do is find food for my friends and go back home. They have to be getting scared by now—I couldn’t
return there yesterday.”
Solander considered that in silence for a long while. “Your parents didn’t look for you when you weren’t there?”
“My parents don’t know who I am.”
Solander’s face went blank. “I don’t understand—but you’ll have plenty of time to tell me. If your parents don’t know who
you are, they won’t miss you, right? So just stay here. You can live in my house.”
“I can’t. If I don’t go back, my friends will starve to death.”
“Well, are their parents as terrible as yours?”
Wraith considered that for a moment. “My parents aren’t terrible. They’re just … Sleeping.”
“Doesn’t matter. Are your friends’ parents like yours? They must be, or they’d see to it that all of you had food.”
“They’re all the same.”
“Fine. Then bring your friends with you. More than a thousand family members and friends live in our winterhouse here, and
about twice that many staff. I won’t have any trouble moving you and your friends in and creating a story for you. How many
friends do you have?”
“Two. Jess and Smoke.”
“That’s no problem. We’ll just pretend you’re distant relatives from somewhere, here on the career exchange program. No one
ever checks the paperwork on that very carefully.” Solander shrugged.