Cast in Chaos by Michelle Sagara
But she was still leaning toward the water, almost in free fall; gravity made her heavier and heavier as she leaned toward the pool’s center and the man’s eyes, as if drawn. And she was; she tried to pull back and it only sent her inches farther over the rail. “Arkon!” she shouted.
Or tried. What came out was so garbled it wasn’t a word at all, just a collection of random syllables similar to the “speech” of very, very young toddlers. The Arkon shouted her name; it made her teeth rattle. But she couldn’t turn and look at him; she couldn’t even move her face. The eyes of the man in the pool grew until they filled the whole of it, tear ducts the size of her head touched the smaller sides; brows that were almost white, they were so blond, nestling against the length. They existed, for a moment, in darkness; there was no skin, no bridge of nose, no cheekbones, no context.
It would have been disturbing even without her sudden loss of control over her own movements. She heard the Arkon’s intake of breath, and every hair on her body stood on end, because that particular breath was familiar to her: it usually presaged fire. This time was no exception.
But the fire, in its entirety, was aimed at the mirror, and when it hit the surface of water, eyes were replaced by white, hissing clouds of vapor. Only then did she stumble—and she stumbled backward, and nearly fell off the damn ladder. Would have fallen, too—but the Arkon caught her wrist in one hand. A hand, she thought, given the grip, that might as well have been chiseled from stone. Granite, maybe.
“Because I am both curious and in a tolerant mood,” he said coldly, “I am not going to drop you.” He did, however, carry her down the ladder, which was awkward, given that he didn’t let go of her wrist. “Tiamaris. I am placing the Private under your care, for the moment.”
Tiamaris came—quickly—to the foot of the ladder. He glanced at the Arkon, who had climbed back up to the platform, and he winced. “Arkon?”
The Arkon said nothing.
“Has damage been done?”
“I am not certain. Previous experiments have indicated that the mirror is not fragile. Attempts to tamper with its functionality have proven futile in the past.”
Tiamaris said nothing. He did, however, grimace when Kaylin asked, “How many of those attempts included full Dragon breath?” He also shook her slightly by the arm as he led her back to where Sanabalis was standing.
“Well?” her only current teacher said, in a tone of voice that was suspiciously like a whisper. She’d never heard a Dragon whisper before, and would have been willing to bet it was impossible.
“I think I’ll wait on the Arkon,” she replied.
The Arkon did not feel that damage had been done to the altar. He was not, however, willing to let Kaylin experiment further. “And not,” he told her grimly, “for the sake of the mirror. I believe that falling into the water at that juncture would have injured you far more than the artifact.”
In theory, given that it was his hoard he was talking about, he should have been relieved. In practice, he was in a mood that was just a touch worse than the one he’d been in when he’d walked into Sanabalis’s rooms. “Arkon,” Sanabalis finally said, when they’d cleared the cramped halls and the cramped stairs and the cramped stacks and made it back to the place where the books, the desks, and the windows resided. “Neither Lord Tiamaris nor I could see what the mirror revealed.”
“Could you hear it?”
The two Dragon Lords exchanged a brief glance, which the Arkon interpreted as a no. “Interesting.”
Kaylin frowned. Mirrors could be keyed, which allowed only certain people to access them; Records could be keyed in the same way. It was more common to protect Records than individual mirrors, and one of these days, Kaylin would probably learn why. It was practical, so magical theory didn’t touch it. Security, on the other hand, talked about the effect of either form of protection, and the reasons why protection of sensitive material might be valuable or necessary. She’d done fairly well in that class, which was beside the point. Mirrors might not activate if the wrong people were in the room or in range of the mirror itself, but if they were active, they were active.
Since this particular mirror was set an annoying height above the actual ground, and was also horizontal, instead of the usual vertical that people had come to expect from a reflective surface, she hadn’t expected the Dragon Lords to see what it showed. She had, however, expected them to hear it, because it had been bloody loud.
She hesitated. “Arkon?”
“Yes,” he replied. “I saw what you saw.”
“Did you recognize the man’s race?”
He raised a brow.
“He looked almost Barrani. Heavier set than any of the Barrani I’ve met, but it’s not impossible. His eyes, though—”
“Yes.”
“He was all the wrong build for a Dragon, wasn’t he?”
The Arkon said nothing for long enough that Kaylin wondered if the first words out of his mouth—in Dragon—would be get out. But what he said, instead, was, “You understood what he said, didn’t you?”
She frowned. “Yes. He was speaking in High Barrani. I know that one, inside and out.” She would have offered him class transcripts to prove the claim, but the transcripts also included the rest of her classes, which were spotty on a good day.
“No, Private, he was not.”
“What was he speaking then?”
“I regret to say that I have no idea. If I play with the images for long enough, I can take educated guesses, because I think the structure is similar to some of what we do know. It is not, however, exact, and it is no form of ancient tongue that exists here. I will, however, take your transcript of what you think you heard.”
Lord Sanabalis now cleared his throat. Since Sanabalis wasn’t generally hesitant, it often amused Kaylin to see him side by side with the Arkon.
“Yes?” the Arkon said. The word was short and curt.
“Private Neya and I have an appointment—at the behest of the Imperial Court—with Master Sabrai in the Oracular Halls.”
“Now?”
“Within the hour, Arkon.”
“Very well. Private, I will give you paper, and you can transcribe what you remember on the way. I would take your report after the appointment, but mortal memory is so ephemeral. You may hand what you’ve written to Lord Sanabalis. He will see that it is personally delivered to me.”
“You realize, if I’m lucky,” Kaylin said, around a mouthful of sandwich cadged from the Imperial kitchens by a servant who was so well dressed he was intimidating, “Marcus will only dock me a day’s pay and eat half my face while informing me about the loss of income?”
Lord Sanabalis, seated opposite Kaylin in the interior of an Imperial Carriage, looked at her and nodded almost absently. He then turned his gaze back to the streets that were moving past in the small frame of the open window. Tiamaris had been dropped off by the bridge across the Ablayne; he and Sanabalis had conversed, briefly, at the foot of that bridge, conspicuously out of the range of Kaylin’s hearing. She’d taken the time to scribble down her remembrances of the vision.
She watched the older Dragon Lord’s face; his inner membranes were high. “Have you slept at all in the past week?” she surprised herself by asking.
Clearly, she’d surprised him, as well. One brow rose, and had he a thicker head of hair, it would have been invisible to hairline. As it was, it was close. “I fail to see the relevance of the question, Private Neya. Dragons, like the Barrani, do not require sleep in any great quantity. Lack of sleep does not damage the performance of our duties.”
She slid into Elantran. “It’s a polite way of saying you look like hell.”
“I was not aware,” Sanabalis replied, failing to follow her linguistic slide, “that there was a polite way of saying that. If it will cause you less worry,” he added, in a tone that implied this was impossible, “I am, indeed, concerned with the unfolding of events. It is my hope that the visit to Everly will provide some counte
“It’s the Devourer.”
“No, it is not. There have always been monsters in our midst, Private, some of whom might, in the right circumstances—and usually without intent—destroy the world. It does not, of course, fill me with joy. I am not a fool.”
“Then what?”
“The magical investigation this afternoon—most of which you were absent for—implies that the boundaries of the circle have moved. They have not moved far, but the effects of random magic are spreading to a larger area of the city.”
“Is the central area getting any worse?”
“I believe the answer to that question must be yes. Your disappearance, for one. But the nature of your disappearance is also particularly troubling. You understand the significance of the Keeper. If the Keeper’s responsibility can be damaged—or sundered from him—randomly…” He shook his head. “You understand my concern.”
She did. “Maybe Everly will tell us something we want to know.”
“That is, sadly, my hope.” He grimaced, and she understood why: hoping for comfort from Oracles was not exactly the act of a rational person. Or Dragon, if it came to that.
Master Sabrai was waiting for them at the open doors, which not even Kaylin could take as a hopeful sign. The guards at the gate didn’t bother to stop the Imperial Carriage, with its obvious Dragon Lord on the inside. They didn’t do more than glance at Kaylin, either, but Dragon Lords generally trumped any other occupant, given that the only Dragons in the Empire served the Emperor directly.
Sanabalis exited the carriage quickly, prompting Kaylin to do the same, and they made the front doors at something like a jog. When Dragons jogged, you felt it if you happened to be matching their stride. Or at least their speed.
“Lord Sanabalis,” Master Sabrai said, walking down the stairs to meet them. “Private Neya.” He was pale, and the dark circles under his eyes implied that if Everly had not once stopped painting since he’d first stretched canvas, Master Sabrai had not stopped watching.
“Master Sabrai,” Sanabalis replied, tendering the exhausted Oracle a very correct nod.
“Please follow me.”
“Is something wrong?” the Dragon Lord asked, although he did obey what was barely a request.
Master Sabrai had not, apparently, heard. Sanabalis glanced at Kaylin; it was meant as a warning, but it wasn’t necessary. She knew two things, heading down the maze of oddly colorful and occupied halls. Everly always painted; that was his version of an Oracle, and he had painted many things in his short life: Dragons, altars, elementals, and deaths. Master Sabrai had seen them all, of course, because he had also been called on to tender an explanation for most of them.
His current mood was unusual; she could tell this by Sanabalis’s grim silence. Which meant something else had also happened.
CHAPTER 13
If she wondered what had happened, the answer was clear before Master Sabrai had fully opened the door that led to the gallery Everly called home. Light was provided by magic and contained flame; it was evening now, and well on its way to pitch-black; the clouds had moved in sometime during the afternoon. But light wasn’t necessary. Nor was sight of Everly’s painting—which she could see only from the back while he worked.
No, it was his voice. Everly couldn’t speak.
But he was speaking now, an endless drone of words and syllables, sometimes louder and sometimes softer.
Lord Sanabalis frowned and turned to Master Sabrai, who had taken a moment to drop his lined face into slightly shaking hands.
“Master Sabrai.”
He lowered his hands, straightened his shoulders, and grimaced. It was, Kaylin thought, supposed to be a smile. “Lord Sanabalis.”
“How long has he been speaking?”
“Two hours, give or take a few minutes.” The Master of the Oracular Halls reached into the folds of his jacket, and withdrew a folded stack of paper. “We attempted to transcribe what he was saying.”
“Did you try to speak with him at all?” Kaylin asked.
“An attempt was made.”
“By who?”
“By myself and Sigrenne. Sigrenne spent some thirty minutes in the attempt. But the…speech…itself seems to be in keeping with his painting. He is neither aware of, nor receptive to, interference or interaction.”
Sanabalis took the transcription.
“It is not, of course, entirely precise,” Master Sabrai said, an edge to his otherwise apologetic voice. “And we have, of course, full running Records of his commentary for your perusal should it become necessary.”
“No one is transcribing now.”
“No. He isn’t speaking in any language that Records could identify.”
“He’s speaking in tongues?” Kaylin asked. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the back of the painting, and could see brief glimpses of Everly’s arms and hands as he switched brushes or added colors to his palette.
Neither Sabrai nor Sanabalis responded, and Kaylin glanced back at them. “What?”
“Nothing, Private,” Sanabalis replied curtly. “Master Sabrai?”
“Please feel free to examine what he has painted. I believe you’ll be surprised.”
“When do you think he’ll finish?”
This was always a worry for Sabrai. Everly did not sleep, eat, or drink while working. Kaylin doubted he even went to the bathroom. “While working” covered the period from stretching a canvas until the moment he’d made his last brushstroke, and it was a large canvas. Sigrenne had said, privately, that food could be pushed into Everly’s mouth while he was working if you stood on the opposite side of the painting from his palette and you never cut across his field of vision.
“Soon,” was the noncommittal reply.
Kaylin shrugged. Fair enough; it wasn’t as if she wasn’t standing in the room while Everly babbled and painted. She could walk a few yards, and get as much of an answer as Sabrai could provide just by looking. She did this now.
Everly’s speech, such as it was, was disturbing. She’d seen in sane prophets and mad drunks on the corners of various city streets for seven years’ worth of patrols, so she had some experience with incoherent speeches. Everly’s was different; the words had force behind them for a run of hundreds of syllables, and then would sink into a whisper; they would break with hysterical laughter, and then drop into raw fury. She listened; she couldn’t help it. It was almost as if he was speaking for a crowd, but one person at a time, and capturing their words and thoughts at that moment.
Listening, she turned to look at the canvas.
“Private?” Sanabalis’s familiar voice came from a long damn way away. He had not yet left Master Sabrai’s side, as if he knew the Master needed more support than his Oracle.
“I know where it is,” she said, in the wrong tone of voice.
“I told you,” Master Sabrai began, “that representations of place do not—” But Sanabalis cut him off.
“Private?” he said again.
Kaylin, however, stared at Everly’s painting. The buildings that had been sketched in rough, coal lines, had been painted and fleshed in—to an extent. They had color, but the color was washed-out and faint, as if he were working in watercolors, and not the oils that so clearly dominated. She saw the flags of the Halls where she worked in the distance; it didn’t matter.
She recognized the buildings. At the farthest left edge of the painting, Evanton’s shop formed the boundary of the street’s end—or as far as Everly had chosen to paint—and at the closest, the sandwich board that stood outside of Margot’s, rain or shine. She recognized, on the right, a textile store—which always seemed so out of place on Elani, and at the far end, the wilting and paint-flecked storefront of Zoltan, a charm-maker who had the distinction of choosing the stupidest name in the district, in Kaylin’s opinion.
Sanabalis joined her. “Private,” he said. He’d used her rank three times, and each time, imbued it with the wei
She shifted her gaze from the familiar buildings to the center of the painting itself. In the foreground, were a handful of men. At least they looked like men, to Kaylin. But they were tall, for humans. They didn’t have Barrani hair—which is to say, their hair was either short, nonexistent, or pulled back from their faces in braids or knots; she couldn’t tell, because she couldn’t see their backs.
They weren’t Aerian, because they had no wings; they weren’t Leontine, because, well. No fangs, no facial fur, and too much clothing. But…they weren’t young. Or rather, the central three of the nine weren’t young. Their hair was gray or white, and their faces were lined by years of exposure to sun and wind. They carried weapons that would have caused every patrol that caught a glimpse of them to stop them and question them for, oh, hours: big, bladed axes, big damn swords, and something that looked like a strung bow meant for Dragons.
But on the farther fringes of these three, the hardened and set grimness of age gave way to the lean determination of youth. Here, the lines across brows and the corners of mouths weren’t yet etched there by anything but paint. Kaylin thought at least two of these younger people were women, but given the heavy clothing they wore and the weapons they carried, she wasn’t certain; they were slender enough that shape could be lost to the shapeless with ease.
They looked…tired. Angry. Frightened. But they didn’t look demonic or evil. They didn’t look like they were going to end a world.
“Private?”
She nodded. “He hasn’t finished the painting yet,” she added. It was true. Behind these figures, were shadows and shapes that implied a host of people without giving them substance. No, they might not end the world. On the other hand, in numbers like these and with those weapons, they were going to either start a war or be crammed on top of each other in a jail that was in no way built to accommodate them.
She frowned and stepped closer to the painting, avoiding the area in which Everly now worked. Everly was still speaking as he painted, but this time his voice was a soft keening, like a cry. She knew better than to touch him, and because she did, she let her hand fall to her side again with effort.