Free Vincalis the Agitator by Holly Lisle Page B

invading army and the heat turns
     everything green to brown, the rich and powerful of the Aboves begin their annual migration to their city beneath the sea,
     Oel Maritias.
    In the spring of the year that Solander turned twenty, and that Wraith, still known by all but Solander, Jess, and Velyn as
     Gellas, guessed that he must have turned nineteen or twenty, the household took itself down to the cool blue depths of the
     summerhouse yet again, down to the world of perpetual twilight where the sun was merely a promise of light that lay, painted
     and flat and dull, on the top of the blue-black liquid sky.
    To celebrate their arrival, they and the other families who summered there held each year a First Week Festival, and for the
     first time, both Wraith and Solander were deemed old enough to attend the adult celebration, instead of being kept with the
     children.
    “What do you suppose is the difference between the adult celebration and the children’s festival?” Wraith asked.
    Solander, stretched out on his bed with his feet propped on the wall, said, “No one will ever really say. They serve distilled
     wines and set up vision chambers, I know. And sometimes the adults go into the festival chambers and don’t come out again
     until the end of the week. I know my parents used to leave me with the house staff when I was younger. I wouldn’t even see
     them for days, and when they did come back, they looked tired.”
    Wraith laughed. “That sounds promising.” He draped himself over one of Solander’s overstuffed chairs, head on one arm and
     legs across the other, and sighed. “Jess is furious that we’re going and she can’t.”
    Solander let his head hang off the side of the bed so that he was looking at Wraith upside down. “I’d take her with me if
     I could. I wish she would go places with me.”
    “I wish she would, too. She’s about to drive me mad.”
    “How can you not be in love with her?” Solander asked. Wraith guessed that his expression was meant to be mournful, but upside
     down it wasn’t coming across. “She’s beautiful, she’s clever—”
    “She’s moderately clever. She plays zith and metachord well enough not to offend, but she’d never be able to play for anyone
     but us. She has no skill with numbers, is only moderately successful at getting off a spell correctly, can’t find her way
     from one part of Oel Artis to another without getting lost, and is useless at history, science, and literature. She doesn’t
     even like to read. Beyond that, she’s bothersome and domineering and vexing and always certain that she’s right and that she
     knows best.”
    “She adores you.”
    “Mmmm. I’m glad to have her for a friend, but I truly wish she adored you. Every time she sees me talking to a girl, her eyes
     go all daggers at me.”
    Solander flopped over and rested his chin on his hands. “We’ll get back to research after the festival.”
    Wraith said, “You only have another two months before you have to present your research before the Board of Advisors, and
     you still don’t have anything.”
    “I have a lot. It’s all work that I got as spin-offs from trying to figure out why you are the way you are, but if nothing
     else, I can present that. I have a refinement for a spell’s energy transport mechanism that’s rather elegant, and a few applications
     for the self-powered magic system that I’m developing—those are completely original. And I have my theory on you. I simply
     don’t have any real-world proofs yet, and I can’t drag you in with me, for obvious reasons.”
    “No, you can’t. I don’t want to be a caged exhibit, or a study case for the entire Division of Theoretical Magics.”
    “Have you given thought to what you will be doing?”
    “I’ve had offers from some of the covils. I scored so highly on history that the Ancients and Devoteds of the Fen Han Covil
     have been at me to join them right after the festival. One of the literary covils