Michelle Sagara – Cast in Silence (страница 5)

“I know what once stood at the heart of the fiefs.” He lifted a veined and wrinkled hand in her direction. “And before you ask, no, I don’t have any idea what’s there now. It’s slightly farther afield than I’m generally prepared to go at my age. But yes, I know it was once called Ravellon by the Barrani.”

“And the Dragons,” Kaylin pointed out.

“At the moment, my interactions with the Eternal Emperor’s Court are exactly none. The one exception to my very firm rule, you already know, and no exception would have been made had I not been indisposed.”

While she technically served the Emperor’s law, the law was a distinct entity. That the Emperor held himself above those laws was a given; he didn’t, however, require Kaylin to do the same. Of course, if he contravened those laws and she spoke up, she’d be a pile of ash.

Evanton contravened those laws by simply existing, as far as Kaylin could tell. For practical reasons, reducing Evanton to a pile of smoldering ash was not in the Emperor’s cards, and if she’d had to bet, she’d bet that the Emperor wasn’t entirely happy about it, either. The elemental garden, with Evanton as its Keeper, was literally a different world—with unfortunate placement: it demonstrably existed within the boundaries of the Empire, and the Dragon Emperor claimed everything in the Empire as his personal hoard, the single exception being the fiefs.

Dragons were very, very precise about their hoards. Kaylin didn’t understand all the nuances of what, to her mind, boiled down to mine, mine, mine, but she was assured that they existed. By, of course, other Dragons.

The store, however, could not be moved. And if it ceased to exist, the elemental wilderness contained behind one rickety door at the end of a dim and incredibly cluttered hall, would break free and return to the world from which it had been extracted. Which would pretty much end most of the lives that Kaylin cared about, although to be fair, it would probably end the other ones, as well.

The Emperor, therefore, overlooked this thumbing-of-nose at his ownership and his authority.

Evanton’s reluctance to talk with Dragons made sense. Their reluctance to speak with him, she understood less well.

He opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again. He still had all his teeth. “Ravellon,” he said, after a long pause, “is a Barrani word.”

“I don’t think so,” she began.

“It’s not the Old Tongue, then. Can we agree on that?”

Since he probably knew more than she did, she nodded.

“But you recognized the rune as Ravellon. Why?”

“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that, Evanton. I honestly don’t. I’m not even your student—why would I try to make your life more difficult?”

“Good point. I should apologize for my temper. I won’t, but I should. It has been a very, very trying day.”

“Why is it only the three elements? Why not all four?”

“Fire in the natural world is contained, for the most part. If we were living over a volcano, and the elements felt this kind of flux, fire would be in the mix, as well. We’re not, thank the gods.” He paused, and then said, “I don’t have to tell you that none of this should leave this garden, do I?”

“It probably doesn’t hurt.” Pause. “Can I tell Severn?”

“You may tell your Corporal, yes. He’s as quiet as the dead. Well, the dead with the decency to stay buried, at any rate.” He looked, now, at his hands. “Ravellon.” He shook his head, and then stared across the table at her.

“Don’t even think it,” she replied.

He did not, however, snap back. Instead, in a much quieter voice, he said, “The fief of Ravellon—if it’s even a fief at all—is impassible.”

She nodded.

“But, Kaylin—something is stirring in the fiefs. Something is twisting in the heart of the city.”

“Evanton—”

“Be prepared, girl. What you see in that rune is not the word itself, not as spoken. But it disturbs me. Ravellon, like Elantra, was meant to be a geographical marker, not a true name.”

“It’s not. A true name.”

“As you say.”

Severn took one look at Kaylin’s very wet and bedraggled face, and turned away.

“If you’re laughing, you’re dead,” she told him. The passage back through the garden had been about as much fun as the passage to the small stone building; her boots were in her hands. Evanton was willing to put up with the rivulets dripping from every square inch of her body; he was not, however, willing to put up with the mud she would have otherwise tracked down the hall.

“It pains me to agree with anyone today,” Evanton added, “but even so, I concur.” Crossing the threshold of the door had returned dry clothing to Evanton, but his hair and his beard were plastered to his face. “And now, you both have your patrol. I have work. Where did Grethan disappear to?” he added, in a tone of voice that made Kaylin cringe on behalf of the unfortunately absent apprentice.

“Billington decided to pay a visit to Margot,” Severn replied, in as neutral a voice as he ever used. “Grethan saw him pass by and decided to investigate.” He glanced at Kaylin, who glanced at her boots and her very wet surcoat.

“Figures,” she said, heading for the door. “Did he take his goons with him, or was it just the usual courtesy call?”

“Until there’s actually an incident,” Severn told her, following in her wake, “we can leave out the name-calling.” He nodded in Evanton’s direction.

“What? Evanton’s called them far worse.”

“I,” Evanton told her, “have no professional interest in Billington.”

“Hopefully, neither do we today,” she replied with a grimace. She pushed his door open, sat heavily on his steps and worked wet feet into equally wet boots. She could swear she heard squelching.

It was not as loud, however, as the sound of shattering glass. She swore under her breath, tying laces with speed that should have rubbed her fingers raw. Thank gods for calluses.

Severn was already down the street. So was half the neighborhood. They weren’t actually pressed around the broken shards of glass; they weren’t that stupid. But they were between Kaylin and Margot’s.

What Kaylin did not need on a day that included a testy Evanton and an insane elemental garden was the responsibility of protecting Margot, a woman she despised. What Kaylin needed didn’t seem to make much difference.

And if it came right down to it, Kaylin wasn’t exactly Billington’s biggest fan, either. He was a cut above Margot when it came to business on Elani, but that wasn’t saying much; he didn’t have her face, her figure or her sheer magnetism. And to date, he’d been unable to buy or hire it, although the constant stream of young women who worked for a week or two in his storefront always caused speculation when things were slow on the beat.

He charted stars, read palms, tea leaves and hands; he also specialized in reading bumps on the head that were conveniently hidden by hair in most cases. His biggest seller, ironically enough, was a cure for baldness, if you didn’t count aphrodisiacs. Kaylin was not a tax collector, and she’d therefore never had call to examine the books of either merchant, but she was willing to bet that Margot’s love potions outsold anything Billington tried to push.

Billington was a man who was keenly aware that there were only so many people to fleece, so his envy often got the better of him. Usually this happened when he’d been drinking, and at this time in the morning, most of the bars and taverns were closed for business.

Kaylin glanced at Severn, and froze. His hand had dropped, not to his clubs, which were regulation gear, but to his waist, around which his weapons of choice lay twined. He was closer to the store than she was, and even if he hadn’t been, he was taller than most of the milling crowd, and could see above their heads.

Kaylin, who’d never been, and would never be, as tall, made do. She tapped two people on the shoulder and told them, tersely, to get the hell out of the way. Her hands were around the haft of her beat stick; nothing she had seen had made her draw daggers. And drawing those daggers on a crowded street was an invitation to a hell of a lot of paperwork; her instinctive dread of reports usually kept her in line in all but real emergencies.

The people started to argue, took one look at her surcoat and her face and backed away. They backed into one or two other people, who started to speak, and then did the same. If this was the effect of being soaking wet in Elani Street, Kaylin thought buckets of water might actually come in useful for something other than dishes.

As they cleared, she saw that Billington had, indeed, brought goons. The window hadn’t shattered by accident, and in the back of the shop, well away from the shards of broken glass, she could see the dim outline of Margot’s clientele. Margot, however, was not cowering with them. She had turned a particular shade of red-purple that clashed in every way with her hair, but somehow suited it anyway.

That, and she wasn’t a fool; she had seen Kaylin trip over her sign, and she had seen Severn right it. She knew they were walking the beat, and she knew that Kaylin’s intense dislike of her business would mean at least someone was watching her like a proverbial Hawk.