Vincalis the Agitator Read Free Page A

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.
    Wraith, whose hard life had taught him that the time to be most suspicious was when anything looked too good, asked, “Why
     would you have us come here? Why offer rooms or food to people you don’t know?”
    “I could use some friends. My cousins are creeps or dullards, and if you can walk through gates, you can do things they could
     never do. Your friends will have a good place to live, and you can take classes with me, and I can figure out why gates don’t
     work on you. I’m going to specialize in magical research,” he added. “You’d make a perfect case study.”
    Wraith stared through the door of the little house up to the big house, and tried to imagine walking through those grand front
     doors as if he belonged there. He tried to imagine never going back to the hollow, chilling silence of the Warrens. All of
     his life so far had been a dare—a strange, lonely challenge. This next step made an odd sort of sense to him. He’d been leaving
     the Warrens a little at a