Vincalis the Agitator by Holly Lisle Page A

to have to do a great
     deal of convincing. But I know a subaltern I think might be … willing to be convinced.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper
     for those last few words. She turned away from both of them. “I’ll go now. If I have any luck, I’ll be back with you as soon
     as I can. Wait here, though—I don’t want to have to do anything to find you that might call attention to any of us.”
    Both boys nodded their agreement, and Velyn vanished down the hall.
    Solander sat on one of his chairs and watched Wraith, who had gone to the door and was staring after her.
    “What’s she like?” Wraith said, his back still to Solander.
    Solander tried to figure out what to tell this strange boy. “She likes men,” he said after long thought. “I’ve never seen
     her show any interest in boys. She’s very smart, and talented in her own way, but a lot of her talent seems to be in getting
     herself into trouble and then evading the consequences of it—at least that’s what my father told my mother. Her own parents
     have considered sending her to Berolis Undersea—that’s a finishing school for young stolti women—for a year or two to calm
     her down. Her mother and my mother are from the same great house and are either second or third cousins—I can never quite
     keep it straight— but they’re also very good friends.”
    Wraith seemed uninterested in any of that. “What does she like to do?”
    Solander thought about the only things he had any real proof that she liked to do—one of which she was probably on her way
     to do again in order to secure Wraith’s friend an aircar—and decided that he had better stick to the less inflammatory facts,
     and leave the more hurtful ones for Wraith to discover on his own once his puppyish adoration had found the time to dim. “She
     likes to gamble. She likes to discuss philosophy. She likes to read and to dance. And she’s very fond of running, for some
     reason—I cannot imagine why, but she asked that a track be laid for her through the stargarden, and every morning she goes
     out there and races around it in circles as if she were being pursued by the Lost Gods.”
    “She runs….” Wraith smiled when he said it.
    “You sound like you think that’s a good thing.”
    Wraith finally turned away from the door and looked at him. “
I
run.”
    Solander laughed a little. “Don’t get your heart set on her. I like her—she’s a friend, and a good person, I think. At least
     mostly. But …” He stood up and headed back to his still-in-pieces distance viewer. “Just don’t get your heart set on her.
     She’s going to end up taking oaths with a Dragon, I’d wager.”
    Wraith said nothing, but in his eyes Solander could see the stirrings of defiance.

    Velyn came back a very long time later—the sun had moved to the middle of the sky, Solander had completed his kit, and both
     boys had eaten a large meal brought to them by Enry.
    She erupted through the door and wasted no time on pleasantries. “Now, if you want to go—both of you after me, and try to
     keep up. We have almost no time, and I swear it’s our heads—mine as well as both of yours—if we get caught.”
    Velyn bolted back out and took off at a run down one corridor and then another. Wraith kept pace with her without any trouble,
     but poor Solander kept getting left behind.
    “Keep up,” she called back, and the red-faced, gasping Solander would lift his hands from his knees, straighten out, and start
     after them again.
    Velyn took them to a place she referred to as the “private drive deck.” The vehicle waiting for them was huge, and of a black
     so dark it seemed to surround itself with a cloak of night in the middle of the day, and marked on each door with a circle
     of gold and green. Solander hobbled onto the drive, leaned over and gripped his knees, and stood gasping while Velyn got in
     and started the spells that made the aircar float just above the ground. Wraith