Michelle Sagara – Cast in Flame (страница 7)

Kaylin remembered, belatedly, to close her mouth. She stared at Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo’s eyes were a luminous gold, and her lips were turned up in a gentle, almost reverent smile. “You have the advantage of me in many ways,” she said.

“Ah, forgive me.” He turned a far less reverent gaze on Kaylin. “Private, introduce us.”

“Sorry. Bellusdeo, this is a friend of mine. He’s called Evanton, around these parts; if he has a family name, he’s never shared. The young man hiding in the kitchen is Grethan, his apprentice.”

Bellusdeo frowned.

“Kaylin is, like the rest of the inhabitants of Elantra, very informal,” Evanton said. He was, however, smiling in his slightly pained way.

“And you allow this?”

“Lady, she has twice saved my garden. In ignorance, she’s borne the responsibility that has been the entirety of my adult life. She has never demanded reward greater than tea and snacks—and if I am to be honest, she doesn’t so much demand as help herself if I am slow. I am willing to accept informality from her; formality would be so unnatural the awkwardness would likely kill one of us.”

“Kaylin, do you understand who Evanton is?” Bellusdeo demanded.

“Yes. He’s the Keeper.”

“And do you understand what that means?”

“He—he stops the elements from destroying each other. And incidentally the rest of us, although I don’t think they’d notice that as much.” She hesitated and then said, “How did you know what he is if you didn’t recognize who he is?”

Bellusdeo now turned to Teela. “Have you never explained?”

“Teela brought me here, the first time. When I wanted practical enchantments.”

Evanton winced.

“Practical?”

“My daggers don’t make a sound when I draw them.”

The Dragon looked scandalized.

Evanton looked even more pained. “We all, as Kaylin likes to say, need to eat.”

“I should have expected no better from an Empire that so denigrates the Chosen.” Bellusdeo’s eyes were now a deeper than comfortable orange.

“I am content, Lady,” Evanton said, voice grave. “If the current Empire does not treat me with the regard or respect you now offer, it is a far less lonely place than it once was. Grethan,” he added, his voice developing the gruffness and irritability of age. “You are being rude to a guest.”

Grethan’s stalks appeared from the left side of the door frame; they were followed, slowly, by the rest of his face. He didn’t look comfortable. He was Tha’alani by birth, but although he had the characteristic racial stalks protruding from his forehead, they were decorative. He couldn’t join the Tha’alaan. He couldn’t speak to his own people the way they spoke among each other unless one of them touched him and entered his thoughts. The deafness had, in the parlance of the Tha’alani, resulted in insanity. In normal human terms, he’d been angry and isolated, and that anger and isolation had almost caused the death of a Tha’alani child.

A child whose life Grethan had, in the end, saved.

Evanton had taken him in; Kaylin often wondered if what had seemed an act of forgiveness and mercy wasn’t just one long, extended punishment. But the only thing Grethan seemed to fear now was Evanton. He certainly wasn’t afraid of Kaylin, Teela or Bellusdeo.

“Grethan,” Kaylin said. “It’s good to see you’re still alive. Evanton seems to be in a bit of a mood today.”

Bellusdeo’s eyes almost popped out of her head. Kaylin made a mental note not to visit Evanton with Bellusdeo in tow.

The small dragon squawked and landed on Grethan’s shoulder. Grethan looked at least as surprised as Kaylin felt. She recovered first. Grethan seemed entranced.

“So why is Evanton so cranky today?”

“Unfair, Private,” Evanton replied. “Your tea is getting cold. And you’ve failed to introduce me to your other companion—although I suppose you could rightly attribute that lack of manners to Lord Teela.”

“If she were unwise,” Teela replied, her eyes an easy green. “Evanton, this is Mandoran. He has just returned to our lands after a long absence, and everything in them is new, except perhaps rudiments of our language. Mandoran, this is Evanton, the current Keeper.”

“Mandoran?” Evanton frowned. It was a very peculiar frown; his eyes narrowed. In the dim light of the storefront, they seemed momentarily blue, although Evanton’s didn’t, as a general rule, change color. He extended a hand. Mandoran hesitated before extending one of his own. “Come, join us. Grethan, if you can detach yourself from Kaylin’s companion, I would ask that you move refreshments to the Garden.”

Grethan’s eyes widened.

“The kitchen, while suitable for a private of the Hawks, is nowhere near suitable for Lady Bellusdeo.” The official title was Lord, but Kaylin didn’t bother to correct him. “We will therefore repair to the Garden.”

* * *

“What is he up to?” Teela whispered. She was at the back of the line, because Evanton’s rickety halls were at best one person wide. She had maneuvered into the position in front of Kaylin, who had pulled up the back, and had merely stopped walking until everyone else was far enough ahead.

Kaylin shook her head. “I don’t know.” She accepted Teela’s suspicion because she felt some of it herself. “How did Bellusdeo recognize him as the Keeper? Did you, when you first met him?”

Teela exhaled. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Mortals don’t have true names, unless they’ve done something technically questionable.”

“Meaning me.”

“Meaning you, yes. No one is certain what having a name means for a mortal, and given you are—theoretically— mortal, you aren’t considered enough of a threat that an answer must be found. The answer itself would take longer than the rest of your life to obtain.”

“And that’s relevant how?”

“Evanton doesn’t have a name, per se. Not the way Immortals do. But if we meet his eyes for any length of time, we can see four words in their depths. They are names, they are linked to him, and they cannot be used to control him. It is the way the Keepers make themselves known to those who might otherwise intend them harm. If you look, you might be able to make out two of those names—but you might not. I’m not certain Evanton would stand still for long enough.”

“He’s not exactly fast on his feet.”

“No, but in his fashion he knows how to intimidate. I’ve never noticed you engaging in staring contests with him.”

“I’m not the one who does that, Teela.”

Teela chuckled, but her eyes remained an alert blue. “I hate the Garden,” she murmured, squaring her shoulders.

“It can’t be any worse than paperwork.”

* * *

Stepping through the narrow, rickety door at the end of an equally narrow, rickety hall was always a bit of a shock. Evanton’s storefront couldn’t, by any stretch of the truth, be called well lit, and the contrast between his work spaces and the Garden’s brilliant, full-on sunlight made Kaylin’s eyes water.

There was a roof, a domed high ceiling that would have fit right in in the Imperial Palace. There were no obvious glass ceilings or windows, and the roof, unlike the Hawklord’s tower, didn’t appear to open to the sky, so sunlight was in theory impossible. But nothing about this room conformed to what she knew of reality, and Kaylin had long since given up attempting to make sense of it.

She made her way across the flat-stone path laid into grass that would have made pretentious merchants weep with envy, pausing by the still, deep pool that sat, untouched by the breeze that moved almost everything else, in the Garden’s center.

It was the heart of the elemental water, made small and peaceful. Beyond it, burning in a brazier that might have been used for incense, fire. Only in Evanton’s Garden could the elements exist so close to each other in peace.

Beyond them was the small stone hut in which Evanton entertained the few guests he was willing to allow into this space.

“I don’t think it’s because of Bellusdeo that he moved tea,” Kaylin said to Teela, as she made her way to the hut.

“No.”

“I really hope Mandoran doesn’t do anything stupid.”

“He’s not Terrano,” Teela replied. “Terrano was the only one of us likely to throw his life away on a whim.”

He was the only one of the twelve who had not chosen to come home. Somewhere in the spaces that mortals couldn’t occupy, he was racing around the incomprehensible landscape discovering worlds and having fun. Kaylin fervently hoped he stayed there.

“Do you notice anything different about Mandoran? I mean, from before?”

Teela didn’t answer.

* * *

When they reached the hut, the door swung open. Like any building of note in magical space, the interior didn’t fit with the exterior; it was far larger than it had any right to be, for one. The floors were no longer rough stone; they were a gleaming marble, more suitable to a grand foyer than a parlor.

There were chairs of a style Kaylin had never seen in the Garden, and a low flat table that was the rough stone one expected to find outdoors. Tea, in Evanton’s ancient, chipped tea set, was on the table, and steam rose from the spout of the pot. There were four cups, straight, tall cylinders absent handles. Kaylin didn’t understand why cups made for hot liquid were ever without handles, but on the other hand, Bellusdeo was unlikely to burn her hand when picking them up.