Cast in Chaos by Michelle Sagara
“If it were finished, he’d respond. He wouldn’t talk, no, but he doesn’t. He would interact. He’s not done. Whatever you did before—try it now.”
“But in an entirely different way?”
Sigrenne managed a chuckle. “That, too.”
Kaylin looked almost helplessly at the colors of splotches on the palette. It was a wonder to her that anyone could turn these muddy mixes into something beautiful—or at least realistic, because to her, they looked like small accidents. What had she done? Not this, not stall for time.
“I’m going to wreck the painting,” she muttered. “And Sanabalis is going to have my head.”
“Sanabalis,” Sigrenne replied, in the same tone of voice she’d used to utter Master Sabrai’s name, “can—”
“Don’t. He’ll probably hear you from wherever he’s standing. They can hear fleas stretching their wings. Usually when it’s most inconvenient for the fleas.”
“We don’t privilege the art,” Sigrenne said, more quietly. “To the Oracular Halls, the paintings, like verbal Oracles, are given the weight of possible future occurrences, not more and not less. Whatever Lord Sanabalis needed to see, I’d say he saw it. The painting has already served its purpose, Kaylin.” What she didn’t say was also significant.
Kaylin took a good, long look at the painting, and then she began. She examined what Everly had done with these new colors, saw the ways in which the choice of color and brushstroke had implied transparency or fading, and chose colors as close to the originals as she could. She wanted to make those buildings solid.
At least, that’s what she thought she was doing. But she hadn’t lied. She wasn’t an artist. She began to paint, yes. She began to choose colors appropriate for the buildings she knew—and hated, and loved—to eradicate the fading. If anyone had asked her what she was doing, she would have told them exactly that. And would have added that she was doing it badly.
She heard Sigrenne’s sudden intake of breath just before the brush was yanked out of her hand, leaving a trail of blue oil across the inside of her palm. Turning, she stepped out of the way before Everly could push her. She saw Ybelline’s eyelids flickering, and shouted a warning to Sigrenne which was, in any case, unnecessary. Sigrenne, supporting most of her weight, had no trouble catching the rest of it when her stalks slid from the back of Everly’s neck, and she collapsed.
She ran to Sigrenne as Sigrenne lifted Ybelline off her feet and carried her to the narrow bed wedged into one corner of the otherwise huge gallery. “Good work,” the matron said quietly.
“Was it?”
“He’s painting again. Go back to him. I’ll sit with your castelord until she wakes.”
Kaylin nodded, although she would have preferred that their caretaking positions were reversed. She made her way back to where Everly was now once again painting like a maniac, as if there had been no interruption. She expected to see him fixing the mess she’d made.
He wasn’t. He was adding to it.
Kaylin had not actually solidified buildings, although that had been her intent. She’d written words. Runes, like horrible, defacing graffiti—at least at first sight.
But he took this rough, flat act of unintentional vandalism, and he worked with it, adding the visual alchemy of color to give the streaks shape, form, and the illusion of dimension. Glowing in golds and blues, faint and muddy, the runes now floated in the air at the height of the portal—and it was, must be, a portal; she understood that now. They seemed to ring the entry, just above the heads of the gathered crowd.
Kaylin took a step back, and Everly suddenly wheeled, aware of her movement as he was never aware of anything external that didn’t directly affect his brushes, his paints, or his canvas. She was caught by his gaze. He didn’t speak. The babbling, the repetition of foreign words, was over.
But he was tired, exhausted, and frantic.
Kaylin wasn’t even surprised when he dug out a brush from his collection and shoved it, firmly, into her hand, folding her fingers around it just in case she didn’t understand what he meant. He pointed her at his palette, waited until she nodded, and then pointed her at his painting. This done, he turned back to his work.
Kaylin took up the brush, took a breath, and joined him.
CHAPTER 14
Kaylin wasn’t Everly. She didn’t have the benefit of the Oracular Trance to protect her from the gasps and the whispers of the people behind her. The first of those was, of course, Sigrenne. Kaylin turned to the older woman, started to explain herself, and felt Everly grab her chin and turn her face back toward the canvas.
“I’m sorry,” Kaylin told the orderly. “I—he—”
“He wants your help.”
“Yes. It’s not like the other time—he was aware that I was here, but I don’t think he cared if I left. He definitely doesn’t want me leaving now.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“So…you won’t break my arms and you won’t let Master Sabrai throw me out for breaking the rules?”
Sigrenne’s laugh was low, tired, and a little bit on edge, but it was on the right side of the edge. “First, Master Sabrai would order someone else to throw you out, and second, it would probably be me. I think, at this point, it would upset Everly as much to remove you as it would to remove his brushes. This does mean, if Lord Sanabalis wasn’t joking, that you’ll be walking home, on the other hand.”
“I don’t think so. They’re not back yet, and I think he’s almost done.” Kaylin then took the full brunt of Everly’s reproachful stare, and she gave herself over to his work and his vision. She had tried sketching and drawing before; hers were always stiff and flat, and she certainly couldn’t do them with her eyes closed.
But here, it was almost better when she did, because what she did when she tried to deliberately add things felt just as stiff and wrong as those early, embarrassing attempts at sketching. And sketches were useful in her line of work. No, she thought, kicking herself. Look at the runes.
Try to see them as Tiamaris would have seen them. Try to look for the shape of the whole, the sense of pattern, of completeness. She began to work. To nudge, with brushes. To see the gaping spot that demanded another rune, like the completion of a sentence upon which the whole of a trial hung.
She wasn’t sure how long she worked, but she was sure when Sanabalis entered the room, because he roared. She jerked, spun around, and met his eyes; they were still orange, but he looked exhausted. The slow simmer of anger was completely absent. So, it had to be admitted, was Kaylin’s hearing, but that would come back.
“If you are finished?” he asked curtly. Master Sabrai was practically weaving on his feet.
“I—” She turned to Everly. Everly didn’t even look at her. He was still painting, but the movements were less frenetic, less desperate. “I guess I’m done.” She set the brush aside, and walked over to Sanabalis.
“Sigrenne mentioned what occurred with Ybelline and Everly,” he said. “Master Sabrai thoughtfully decided not to invoke the very strictly enforced rules yet again. We are in his debt.” Which Dragons, of course, loved. Fingers trailing the length of his beard, he added, “I do not understand why Everly allows you to add to his works in progress. I am not, on the other hand, certain that anyone else has ever tried. Master Sabrai?”
“To my knowledge, Lord Sanabalis, Private Neya would be the only individual who has tried. All other recorded attempts to interfere with Everly involved interference with the boy himself—usually in an attempt to keep him from dying of dehydration or lack of sleep.”
“It would be an interesting experiment.”
“Indeed,” Master Sabrai replied. In a tone of voice that was usually reserved for the word never. “Sigrenne says Ybelline Rabon’alani is now conscious.”
The Tha’alani castelord was both conscious and standing by the time Kaylin and Sanabalis reached the narrow bed. “My apologies, Lord Sanabalis,” she said, tendering the Dragon Lord an Imperial half bow.
&nb
“The ride would be appreciated.”
The carriage pulled into the street. Kaylin glanced at the bright moon’s height and cringed. But the thought of sleeping in the carriage, at least until Sanabalis kicked her out at whatever he decided was her destination, vanished the minute Ybelline spoke.
“You were correct, Lord Sanabalis,” she said softly. “Everly was speaking a language. It is a specific language, of course—and it is not a language that is spoken, to my knowledge, anywhere within the Empire of Ala’an.”
“Your knowledge?” Kaylin said sharply.
Ybelline nodded, understanding what Kaylin meant. “It is not found within the Tha’alaan. No member of my race since the awakening has heard it spoken.”
Sanabalis nodded so inscrutably Kaylin couldn’t tell whether or not this was a surprise to him. “More germane, at the moment, is how much of it you absorbed. Would you recognize it, if you heard it again?”
Ybelline nodded.
“Could you speak it, if required?”
There was a minute of hesitation before Ybelline nodded again. She glanced at Kaylin, as if she could tell that Kaylin was only barely stopping a question from leaving her mouth. Reaching out, she placed one gentle hand on Kaylin’s arm—which, oddly enough, loosened her tongue.
“What happened, with Everly? Why did he freeze like that? Why did you almost collapse?”
The Tha’alani castelord shuddered. “I…cannot describe it easily,” she finally said. “Everly…was speaking…for the people he was painting. It was as if…they were part of the future. Not a future, and not a possible future, but the future. It was that solid.”
Sanabalis cleared his throat; it was meant as either correction or warning. He had enough respect for the Tha’alani castelord, however, that he didn’t commence with pointless lectures. Kaylin, who had often thought titles and positions were useless, briefly wondered if she’d been wrong.
“We will require your presence at the Palace on the morrow.”
“In the morning?” Ybelline asked quietly.
“Yes. By that time, I will have conveyed my findings and my concern to the Court. I apologize for the lack of warning,” he added, “but it is essential that you convey as much of your understanding of this language as it is possible to convey to the…deaf. They will be our first line of communication should they be required, until we know more about the people who speak the language itself.
“They will not be our most efficient means of communication, but…”
Ybelline nodded gracefully. “Your consideration, Lord Sanabalis, is appreciated. We will, of course, do whatever we can, should the Emperor require our more direct intervention.”
To Kaylin’s surprise, Sanabalis ordered the driver to drop her in front of her apartment door. As she opened her side of the carriage, he said, “You will also report to the Palace in the morning.” Before she could speak, he lifted a hand—a gesture with which she was entirely too familiar—and added, “I realize that diverting you from the office directly to the Palace would cause your Sergeant some concern, and as I will have a very long night ahead of me, I wish to avoid dealing with that concern.
“Make your report to Sergeant Kassan as efficiently—and quickly—as possible. Remind him, if he is still in the same unfortunate mood, that the Emperor requires you to be both mobile and functional. I will mirror Caitlin to let her know when you will be expected.”
Kaylin mumbled something that she hoped sounded like thank you. It had a very throaty Leontine curl to its syllabic edges. She fumbled with the key, unlocked the door, and made her way up the stairs, all of which creaked. Fumbling with another lock was not her idea of fun. She had, at this point, no idea of fun whatsoever.
The door, however, was unlocked. She grimaced. Light leaked along the slightly warped edges where door met doorjamb. Someone had thoughtfully lit a lamp. Given that she had no lamp oil at the moment, because she didn’t have money to spend on anything but food, she could pretty much guess who it was.
“Hello, Severn,” she said, as she opened the door.
Had he been Teela, who sometimes liked to drop in, he would have been sprawled like a territorial cat all over her bed. He wasn’t; he was seated, hands in his pockets and legs extended, in one of her chairs. He had even removed the clothing that had been hanging off its back and made a neat, folded pile of it. Given what it was going to end up looking like about fifteen minutes after she’d put it on, she’d never really understood people’s obsession with folding clothing.
Severn lifted his head. “Long day?”
“To end all days,” she replied. She slung her jacket over the bottom half of her unoccupied bed, and sat down heavily on the top half.
“Let me make it slightly longer,” he replied. He held out the bracer she’d lost in the nothingness. She took it in silence. “What happened this afternoon?”
“You mean, what happened this morning?”
“No. Sergeant Kassan managed to get a fairly detailed description of your early morning with the Oracles out of the man who runs the place.”
She cringed. “He’s really not as bad as he looks. And he does keep them more or less safe. The Oracles, I mean.”
“You’ve eaten?”
“Sort of.”
“How long ago?”
“I honestly don’t know. I have no idea what time it is. Because I was deliberately not looking at the moon’s position. I like to pretend I’ll get enough sleep that I won’t make a total ass of myself when Marcus attempts to rip out my throat in the morning.”
He chuckled. “I brought food.”
Her stomach growled, but then again, it often did. “You ate?”
He nodded. “I had a feeling, given the location of your last call-in, that you might be hungry when you arrived. I expected the arrival to be a few hours ago, so it may be stale.”
Her stomach didn’t much care, and truthfully, she’d eaten things far worse in her time. There was comfort in food in general, comfort in the stuffed rolls in particular, and comfort in chewing because it meant she didn’t have to talk while she was doing it.
“I left the office after reporting in,” she said, speaking anyway because it was late and she knew he wasn’t going anywhere until at least a truncated version of the day’s events had passed her lips, along with stray crumbs. “I headed down to Elani. I figured I’d catch you there. I met Grethan. He told me that you were in the Elemental Garden with Evanton.”
Severn nodded. “He let you in.”
“Sort of. He meant to let me in—I swear, anything that happened was not his fault—but the room I entered wasn’t the Garden I know. That, and it was empty. But when I tried to leave…” She shook her head. “The hallway had separated from the door frame.”
He frowned. “Separated how?”
“There was a gap between the door and the hall it in theory opened into.”
“Small gap?”
“Oh, about ten yards and growing with each second.” She winced, and added, “Grethan must have been—”
“He was hysterical, yes.”
“Before or after you started questioning him?”
“After Evanton started questioning him.”
Severn continued to listen to her account of the day’s events. He said a very loud nothing when Nightshade came into the story, but once she’d managed to exit the Castle, continued to probe. It took longer than Kaylin would have liked, because what Kaylin had wanted, from the minute she unlocked the front door to the whole damn building, was to crawl into her apartment and fall into bed. It wouldn’t have been the first time she hadn’t bothered to shed clothing before she did, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
But she also understood that Severn needed to hear the rest, and frankly, that she needed him to know it. She just didn’t need him
“You’re leaving?”
He glanced at the windows. “I’ll stay. You have a few hours of sleep before I throw you out of bed. I’ll take care of breakfast,” he added. Which was good, because on this little sleep, Kaylin never bothered. He pulled the other chair closer to the one he’d occupied. “Go to sleep, Kaylin. I’ll watch. I’ll keep watch.”
She meant to tell him that she didn’t need that anymore, but the words wouldn’t leave her mouth. “Did Marrin—”
“Marrin did mirror. She apparently has two day-old foundlings of a slightly unusual nature. She didn’t say more. She asked you to mirror when you have the time.”
Kaylin fell back into the bed. “Midwives?” she mumbled.
“No calls, there. If something strange has happened, it wasn’t life-threatening in any way that required your intervention. Kaylin. Sleep.”
She turned her back on him and stripped off most of her clothing, tossing it all over her shoulder and onto the floor. Then she shuffled over to the window-side of the bed.
He laughed. It wasn’t an entirely happy laugh.
“What?”
“I’ll sleep here.”
“It’s not as if we didn’t share a bed for most of our—”
“You were younger.”
“So were you.”
“It would be more difficult now—for me. I’ll watch,” he added, smoothing the edges off his words. “Sleep.”
And she did, thinking as she drifted off, that she really didn’t understand Severn.
True to his word, he did take care of breakfast—and it was not the usual bread and hard cheese on the run; he was cooking. Sausages, she thought, and eggs. The windows had been opened, and morning sunlight—never the best of friends—now reminded her that opening her eyes could be painful. She didn’t ask what time it was; instead, she wandered over to the bucket of water, and splashed enough of it around her face that she could at least sponge it clean. Her hands took more work, and the water was noticeably darker when she’d done. She then rooted through the impromptu closet of floor and the neat pile Severn had made of chair contents.