But this driver kept turning around and smiling at him. And then it snapped into place. The driver was smiling at the
woman
in the backseat. Asking her questions about herself, because she was a woman. Wraith sighed. “The play was good. I got a
call that a friend of mine just had terrible news; I need to go see her, and I decided not to wait.”
“That’s a shame.” The man concentrated on his driving for only an instant. “Then I don’t suppose you’d want to stop off for
a little drink at this charming place I know. I’m buying.”
“If I was in too much of a hurry to watch the rest of the play, I’m certainly going to be in too much of a hurry to stop off
for a drink.”
“Maybe after?” He evidently caught the look on Wraith’s face, for he shrugged and turned around.
Wraith couldn’t believe this. Did women have to put up with this sort of nonsense all the time? Was just getting a driver
to take them from pick-up to destination always an ordeal? Probably not for the plain ones. He thought if he let Brenjin and
Kervin turn him into a woman again, he’d make sure they made him as homely as possible.
The aircar left him in front of Jess’s house. But Jess didn’t come to the door when he knocked. Some man did—a tall, heavy-boned,
bovine-faced young man with thick lips and unnervingly shrewd eyes.
“I’ve come to see Jess Covitach-Artis about a matter of great importance. It’s an emergency.”
The man leaned against the door and said, “Sweet lady, you could have come to tell her that the world would end on the morrow,
and I would not wake her from her sleep. She was gray with exhaustion, and if you’re any true friend, you’ll tell me whatever
message you have to pass on and then be on your way.”
“I can’t tell you,” Wraith said, dropping his voice so that he no longer sounded like a woman. “I’ve risked my own life to
come here, and if I tell you, then you’re likely to die, too. If I don’t get this message to Jess, she’s likely to end up
working in the mines.”
The man stared at him for a long, shocked-silent time. “You’re a man.”
“Only way I could get past the people who were watching me without being followed. It is … it is life-and-death. If you care
about her, and I have to believe you do, wake her.”
The man licked his lips, glanced out into the empty street, and then nodded. “Get inside. Sit in the kitchen—pull the blinds.
I’ll go get her for you.”
“Thank you.”
Wraith had never been in Jess’s house. It didn’t seem to have much of her in it—at least not the her he’d known. It had a
somber feel to it, all muted colors and carefully placed furniture and expensive pieces of artwork that lacked much in the
way of character. The front room, the great room off to the left, the broad arched hallway that led off into an office and
an atrium … He walked in the direction her friend had pointed him in and suddenly found the kitchen. Unlike the rest of the
house, it was truly Jess. Fish everywhere—little statuettes, and hand-painted tiles on the counters, and fish peeking out
from behind forests of coral on the hand-painted walls. It looked like her room in Oel Maritias had looked, back when the
two of them were children. The rest of the house had left him unmoved, but this nearly tore his heart out. He missed their
childhood. He missed the hope for the future that it had held.
He sat at the table, looking at two little painted carvedwood fish that were holding hands and dancing. They had sweet faces—they
smiled at each other as they danced, and he could almost imagine them laughing and carrying on a conversation. He held them
up to see if the artist had signed them.
“They’re clever, aren’t they?”
Wraith jumped. He hadn’t heard Jess coming up behind him.
She was smiling, but it was her polite, distant business smile. “Patr told me there was some emergency. For him to have gotten
me out of bed, it must have been impressive … and I didn’t catch your name, stolta.”
“Wraith,” Wraith said.
Jess’s mouth dropped open and her eyes went wide. Wraith would have accused any of his actresses who gave such a broad reaction
of over-acting. In Jess, the reaction was right, but comical. She put her hands up to her breastbone and shook her head slowly.
“Oh … gods … what happened to you?”
Wraith said, “I’ve had people following me. If you come to the meeting you scheduled tomorrow, they’re likely to follow you.
It … it might get you killed. I’m not sure who they are, but I have potential trouble from two different sources that I know
of, and might have offended someone I don’t know about. Any meeting to discuss business needs to wait—it simply isn’t worth
the risk.”
“The meeting wasn’t to discuss business,” Jess said. “That was a cover to let me get to you without raising suspicion. Everything
I’m doing on this trip was a cover for my visit to you.”
Wraith felt suddenly cold. “What’s going on?”
“There are rumors about you that could get you killed,” Jess said.
“Rumors?” He smiled a little. “I have worse problems than rumors.”
“I don’t think you do. You see, these are the rumors that I’ve heard: that you’ve acquired or created a private army, that
you are using magic to control the minds of your audiences and to force them to work for you as traitors to the Empire, that
your actors aren’t truly human but are sub-human creatures that you’ve costumed to hide their monstrous natures. That you
aren’t who you appear to be, but someone else instead. Perhaps a Strithian agent. Perhaps something even more insidious.”
Wraith sat in the kitchen, listing to Patr moving about down the hall in one of the other rooms. Wraith breathed in and out
a few times, hampered by the tight contraption that compressed his ribs and forced his waist into an inhumanly tiny shape.
“That’s not good,” he said at last.
“It sounds to me like you have a traitor. I mean, none of the things I’ve heard have been exactly correct …”
“But none of them have been exactly wrong, either,” Wraith finished.
“Yes.”
Wraith started to rest his chin in his hand, remembered the makeup all over his face at the last minute, and stopped himself.
He would hate to be a woman, he thought. At least one who caked this itchy slop all over her face all the time, or wore ludicrously
uncomfortable clothing just to alter her appearance. What a miserable pain it was not to be able to sit comfortably, to have
to think about face paint, and the hang of clothing, and the way each foot had to go to make hips swing correctly, and … pah!
Life was too short to be hampered and caged and constricted by such nonsense.
He leaned back, making himself as comfortable as he could, and said, “I cannot imagine who might be spreading these rumors.
I have good people. Truly good people. I screened all of my employees carefully before I hired them, I’ve been careful never
to mix my private goals with my public persona, or to have people who know me in one capacity also working with me in the
other. I have been careful.”
“It doesn’t matter. Perhaps there’s money involved. Blackmail. Sex. I could think of a dozen reason why people would turn
on an employer. Two or three that would encourage them to turn on a friend.”
He nodded. “So can I. I just don’t want to believe that someone I trust could be capable of such treachery.”
“Just so long as you
do
believe….”
“I believe. But it adds another question to the identity of the person or people who hired those investigators to follow me.”
“You sure they didn’t follow you here?”
“They would have had to recognize me. I left in a small crowd, and I didn’t look like myself.”
“True.” Jess had been fidgeting with something over by the window. Now she turned and sighed. “Wraith, you need to have friends
around you right now.”
Wraith stood up. “That’s exactly what I don’t need. You haven’t done anything wrong, Jess. You’ve had no part in any of this;
you don’t know who’s involved, you don’t know what we’ve done, you don’t know what we plan to do. And that’s the way I want
it. If I have a traitor somewhere in my organization, the last thing I want is for him or her to make a connection to you.
So go back on your tour, and stay away from here for a while. Keep up with the nightlies; if you hear anything about me, figure
that at least you’re safe.”
“I know a few things. I know about the Kaan … and the Warrens—”
“Shut up.”
“What?”
“Shut up. You don’t know anything. Leave it at that.” He leaned toward her and in a whisper said, “Whoever is watching me
has placed magical listening devices around my house … and my office. I’ve left them in place because as long as I know where
they are, I don’t have to try to find ones that are better hidden. But … you don’t know who might be listening to us or watching
us right now.”
“That’s … silly. Why would anyone be watching us? Why would anyone have placed listening devices around my house?”
“Because you made an appointment with me. If the traitor has access to my appointment calendar—and I must assume until it
is proven otherwise that he does—then you have created a fresh connection from you to me. And since you were a childhood friend
of mine, you’re going to have raised some suspicions anyway.”
“No. I refuse to live my life thinking that the world is such a devious place.”
“Don’t be stupid.” Wraith stood up. “Think about everything you know of the Hars. Of magic. Of the Warrens. Have you gotten
so careless or so soft—or so trusting—that you could think that the Masters of the Hars would quibble over crushing someone
as insignificant as you?”
Jess winced. Wraith felt like a fiend for being so harsh with her, but she’d spent too long feeling secure, popular, and loved.
She’d managed to move herself away from her dark origins and the horror that she knew to be truth. It was easy to do that;
the past burned so horribly, the present comforted so completely.
“I’m sorry,” Jess said. “You’re right, of course. I don’t know, and don’t need to know, what you’ve been doing. I only felt
that you were in danger and I did not want to let the danger come to you without warning.”
Wraith nodded. Jess had turned around and was staring out the window again. Wraith could see the tension in her shoulders,
the way her body had gone rigid, the way it used to back when she was a little girl, when she was afraid.
“I still love you,” she added.
“I’m sorry,” Wraith said. “I’m sorry we never worked out. I was young and stupid, and now that I am older and wiser, I can
look at you and see what I missed. Only now I can’t have you because I don’t dare have you near me.”
“Do you think you could love me? Someday?”
Wraith did not want her to keep hoping he’d someday find his way to her. If she could let go of that hope, she could find
love elsewhere. “I still love Velyn,” he said, putting misery into his voice. Not too difficult, that. “As much as I wish
I were free of her, I don’t think I’ll ever be.”
“Ah. She never deserved you.” Jess turned back to face him, and Wraith saw the tears streaking her cheeks. He didn’t dare
touch her—the ruin of his makeup could prove fatal to him, and anything that revealed his true identity too soon could prove
fatal to her. He needed to be well away from this place before he stopped being the woman in silk and became Gellas Tomersin—Gellas,
Master of the Theater.
“I need to leave now,” he said.
“I’ll have Patr drive you wherever you want to go.” Jess wiped her tears on her forearm, just as she had when she’d been a
child. Wraith had another moment of sharp memory, a moment in which it hurt to breathe. Why couldn’t he have loved her? Why
couldn’t he have seen in her the companion who would stand by him, instead of falling stupidly for the faithless Velyn?
Because he was blind. An idiot. A fool.
Because he was human, and that seemed to sum the rest of it up perfectly.
He left as quickly as he could—sat next to Patr in the front seat of the elegant aircar and said, “The Cordorale, please.
At least I’ll blend in there.” The two of them had little to say to each other, but finally Wraith said, “Do you care about
her?”
Patr glanced away from the corridor through which they floated, surprise on his face. “I work for her.”
“I know you do. But this is important. Do you care for her?”
Patr swallowed hard and looked away. “I love her.”
“Good. Get her away from Oel Artis by whatever means you must, and keep her away. Hide her if you have to—from everyone. Ugly
things are going to happen here, and I don’t want them to happen to her.”
Patr’s jaw tightened. “You’ve been her friend for a very long time.”
“All her life. What happens to her matters more to me than what happens to me.”
Patr said, “You’ve managed to keep your distance pretty well, for someone who cares so much.”
“I’ve managed to keep the people I care about out of the parts of my life that could hurt them.”
“You have a lot of secrets, do you, Gellas?”
“None that need concern you. Except this—I love her, too. I was a fool not to pursue her when I could have. Now I can’t. But
I still love her. I want to know that she’ll be safe.”
“I’ll protect her with my life.”
“That’s all I ask.”
Patr pulled the aircar into an empty lot, far from where Wraith needed to be.
Wraith glanced over at the bigger man, suddenly uneasy. “This isn’t the Cordorale.”
“We’ll get there,” Patr said. “But I have something to ask of you.”
“And that is?”
“Never go near her again.”
“What?”
Patr’s knuckles whitened on the controls, and he glared at Wraith. “You heard me.”
“I did. But when this is over—”
Patr waved him to silence. “It will never be over. I’ve heard the rumors. I have an idea of what you’re involved in. Perhaps
you’ll slip free of the Empire for a while, but sooner or later they’ll catch up with you. You will never be free of the poison
that you have drawn to yourself, and that poison will touch the lives of everyone you let yourself get close to. You had the
sense to stay out of her life before. Trust that same sense. Let this be the last time you see her—for her sake.”