They were two days from the first open call for actors when Wraith finally came to a decision. Velyn was bent over a piece
of the third act backdrop, painting. Her hair fell around her face, and paint speckled her hands, and the graceful curve of
her back made his mouth go dry.
He sat beside her and for a while simply watched her, while he tried to consider which words he could use to ask her the question
that had been driving him to distraction for so long. At last he said, “Velyn?”
She looked up at him and smiled—the smile he loved so much. “You’ve been quiet today. Having doubts about our little enterprise?”
“No doubts,” he said. “Not about the play, not about the theater. But … yes. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.”
Velyn laughed her soft, low laugh, shook her head with mock seriousness, and said, “You shouldn’t do too much of that. It
isn’t good for you.”
“I shouldn’t,” he agreed, “but I can’t seem to stop myself.” He took her hand in his and said, “You and I have been working
toward the same goals. We want the same things from life—to bring freedom to the people of the Warrens, to make a difference
in the world. To leave Oel Artis a better place than we found it.”
Her expression seemed to him a bit bemused, and he thought, I’m not saying this right. I’m not saying any of this the right
way.
“We fit each other, Velyn,” he said. “And I love you. I love everything about you—the way you move, the way you talk, the
way you keep surprising me with things that you know I never, ever heard of. I would spend an eternity with you. I would spend
two eternities with you, if I could have them.”
Velyn laughed. “I love you, too, Wraith. But you already know that.”
He nodded. “I want to offer you vows, Velyn. I want to offer you myself. I want to be your love, your partner, your companion
and friend, for the rest our lives and beyond into eternity if the bonds of our vows will transcend death.”
He had done it in a rush, hoping to see in her face receptivity, excitement, joy. But what he saw in her eyes was … evasion.
She smiled, and her smile was sad. “I love you, Wraith. Can’t having
now
be enough? Can’t it be enough that we have this moment, this work we share, our nights together for as long as we have them?
Can’t we find what joy we can in that and hold it to ourselves—create memories that we can keep, and accept the days that
come?”
He didn’t understand. “You love me. Don’t you?”
“With all my heart. With my body. With my soul. I have loved you since we first met.”
“Then why won’t you say you’ll join in the nutevaz with me?”
What he saw next in her eyes he liked even less than the evasion. He saw pity, and inwardly he shuddered.
She sighed deeply and looked down at her paint-speckled hands. “I’m stolti,” she said, not looking at him. “I couldn’t take
vows with you if you were chadri—not even if you were rich and powerful and had your own house in Oel Artis Travia.”
Wraith stared at her as if he had never seen her before. “Wait just a moment. I don’t think I quite understand this. You love
me. You agree that you and I are wonderful together. But you wouldn’t even consider taking vows with me because I’m not stolti?
You aren’t legally obligated to choose someone from the stolti class as your vowmate, and even if you were, my papers and
my identity disks and everything else identify me as stolti.”
“Your papers say you’re stolti. But you aren’t. Not really. You’re a Warrener. That’s even worse than if you were a parvoi,
for God’s sake. Beyond your false papers, Wraith, you don’t even
exist
… legally.”
“But you love me. I love you. We could spend the rest of our lives together.”
“Wraith—members of the highest class of families in the Empire can’t just join in the nutevaz with
anyone
. Vows introduce a contractual obligation into the relationship, and contractual obligations put family fortunes into play.
They give both members of the relationship rights in regard to houses and properties, accumulated wealth, businesses, political
seats, hereditary seats.”
Wraith didn’t like what he was hearing at all. It made him feel sick. But he wanted to hear all the lovely little things she’d
been keeping inside for all the years that he had known her. “And do you think I’d take your money, Velyn? Try to walk off
with a property willed to you by your grandmother, or some such thing?”
“Wraith, we’d never even get that far. I’d go home, tell my father that you’d asked me to take vows, and he’d say, ‘Have his
parents send me their opening contracts. And we’ll have to find a mutually convenient place to meet, and we’ll have to each
bring a property appraiser to assess each other’s accounts and standings.’ And then I would say, ‘Well, actually Wraith doesn’t
have any parents, or any property.’ And that would be almost the end of the discussion. The
end
of the discussion would arrive in the form of people coming to take you away to the Southern Hell-hold Greenskeld mines because
you are not who you say you are, and have for years been masquerading inside a place you have no business being, taking advantage
of the hospitality of the house.”
Wraith sat there thinking about this for a moment, almost mollified. “So your concern is for my safety. If we presented this
issue to your parents, they would …” He closed his eyes, his vision suddenly cleared, and he smiled broadly. “Wait. You’re
well past the age where I would have to ask your father’s permission. You and I could simply take an aircar to Falkleris City
in Arim, present our papers, and take vows there without any interference with anyone.”
But Velyn didn’t return his smile. Instead, she looked away from him, but before she did, he saw again the evasion on her
face. “We could. But that isn’t what I want.”
Wraith said, “Then you don’t want me.”
“I do want you. But I also want the blessing of my parents. A vowmate that won’t be at risk from any too-careful scrutiny
of his papers or an in-depth check of his past. Someone who is who he says he is—who doesn’t spend every moment of every day
living a lie.” She patted his wrist. “Not that you can help that, Wraith. Obviously you couldn’t have stayed in the Warrens,
and you’ll eventually do so much for your people. But …” She wrinkled her nose the tiniest bit. “Your people are not my people.
And frankly, I wouldn’t want them to be. You’re unique, but knowing that I had a responsibility not just to you but to those
… those creatures within the Warrens …” Her voice trailed off, and she turned her face away from him and closed her eyes.
He cringed at the distaste on her face.
“Velyn, I don’t understand you at all. I mean, I’m understanding you better, but … you’re working alongside me to help free
those
creatures
from their involuntary slavery. If they don’t matter to you, why are you doing this?”
“It’s the right thing to do. The fact that helping them is the right thing to do, though, doesn’t mean that I want them to
be my family.”
“I see.” He wanted to crawl into a hole and die, but he did see.
“Wraith—we have wonderful times together. We are closer to each other than any vowmates I know. If it can’t last forever,
what does that matter? Nothing lasts forever, and at least now is good.” She put a hand over his and tipped her head in that
fashion he had always found so winning.
This time he found nothing winning about it. Wraith pulled his hand away and said, “You said you hope someday to take vows
with the blessing of your parents. But you’ve clearly demonstrated that you’ll never take them with me. Am I correct?”
She had the nerve to look hurt. “Someday, Wraith, yes. I want to have a vowmate with whom I can have children—children my
parents will be able to accept. Children with two sets of grandparents that are … human. Wraith,
I love you
. This doesn’t have to affect us right now, maybe not for years. But if you could stand where I am standing, you would see
that there are other things besides love that have to be considered.”
He stood. “So I see.” He started to walk away, then turned and glared at her. The urge to hurt her, to cut her as deeply as
she had cut him, overwhelmed him. “Maybe this wouldn’t have to affect us. But consider this: If you don’t start looking for
the man you want to keep right away, you’re going to be too old to have children without the help of some very nasty dark
magic. I’m betting you’re pretty close to too old already. So why don’t you get going? Start looking for your … your
acceptable
vowmate.” He turned and walked out of the theater. He’d heard her gasp, and he knew that his dagger had hit its mark. She’d
always been sensitive about her age—about the fact that she was not just older than him, but at the outside edge of the age
range by which time most men and women had chosen their vowmates.
Perhaps she did love him, Wraith thought—to some degree, anyway. Perhaps she hadn’t started looking for a vowmate because
she wanted to spend every minute—until the time that she could no longer put off her search—with him.
But he didn’t want her for some brief, pathetic liaison. He wanted her forever—he wanted to be able to say to anyone who might
ask that she was his vowmate, the person who had chosen him as much as he had chosen her. He wanted to have a real, tangible
claim to her. He’d always thought they were heading toward that.
Since the first time he saw her, he’d never imagined himself with anyone else. Never.
He walked, along streets heavy with commercial traffic, past vast buildings that housed impersonal businesses that created
wealth of one form or another for the people crouched in the houses they’d built on air like petty and vindictive gods. He
had hidden himself within their ranks for too long. He needed to move away from the Aboves for good. He needed to keep his
feet on solid ground from now on.
She would be gone when he finally got back to his rooms, he thought. He doubted that he would ever see her again—no need to,
really. If he never went back to Artis House, they would have no mutual point of contact. He could send for the few things
that belonged to him. If he made good with his theater, he’d have enough money to get by on his own. Solander wouldn’t have
to keep pouring money at him as if he were trying to fill a bottomless well.
He glanced around the neighborhood, trying to get his bearings. He was lost. Well and truly lost. Good. Maybe, if he tried
hard, he could lose himself for good.
When Wraith killed Shina with his stupid attempt to take her out of the Warrens, he’d wanted to die. He’d wished that he could
simply summon the rage of the gods to devour him in one mighty blast of fire. But the gods had been cruel and he had lived.
He’d never let himself invest too much in his hopes and expectations for people after that, though. He’d learned that the
person who cared deeply was simply asking to have everything he loved crushed and destroyed—the best thing to do was to never
love.
And then, fool that he was, he had broken his cardinal guideline. He had let himself truly love Velyn. He had let himself
care about the outcome of their relationship. He had let himself hope, and dream, and want.
And for a second time, life had demonstrated that love was rewarded only by hideous, excruciating pain.
So. He wanted to die, but he wouldn’t. This time he wouldn’t because he still had something to do that only he could do. He
had to free the Warreners—not just the Warreners of Oel Artis, but Warreners from every city in the Empire.
He had to write his plays that would show the dark side of magic, that would present to audiences the price paid for taking
the easy road; he had to plant the seeds of doubt about the benevolent Empire of the Hars Ticlarim and its guiding Dragons;
he had to make people understand that by moving away from unthinking magic use, they could save lives. He would live without
love because he had no choice—but his life would still matter. He would still exist for a reason.
The cold of the air bit through him, and suddenly he realized that full darkness had fallen, and he’d reached a part of the
city unlit by anything save fire. He would have thought such a place could not exist in the closely watched, minutely controlled
Empire, but it did. So odd, so impossible was the look and feel and even the shape of this place, that he stopped and stared.
He heard laughter in the distance, and the sounds of music—drumming and chanting and singing, and deep harsh bells and something
stringed and bowed that sounded like cats fighting. He looked around him—the street seemed safe enough. The inhabitants of
this place lit their streets by flames—enclosed lanterns hung on posts that cast an oddly comforting blue-gold light. He did
not see anyone lurking, and the area was clean and pleasant-smelling—wood fires and food cooking and incense burning, a rich
and wondrous sweetness in the air.
He knew he should try to find his way back to the theater. Or to his suite in the Materan Ground School. Or …
Laughter, and singing, and wood fires. Something about the place, about the scene, proved more compelling than his wish to
nurse his pain and revel in his own misery. What in the hells where people doing burning wood for heat? Burning oil or some
other liquid for light? Why were their houses built of what looked like common rocks stacked one atop another, instead of
the beautiful, almost weightless, translucent, nearly indestructible whitestone that was the product of Dragon magic and that
was the ubiquitous building material of the Empire? Who were these people?
He found his feet again, and with them his curiosity. And he set off toward the sound of music and laughter.
The houses in this odd neighborhood had been built around a central circle of open ground, and in the center of the circle,
he found the source of light and noise, laughter and music. A whole tribe of people dressed in clothing as different as their
houses stood or sat around a fire as tall as a man. Some of them sang, some played instruments, some danced, many just clapped
their hands and laughed as they watched.