Cast In Secret (23 page)

She shrugged, a Hawk’s shrug. “It wasn’t. Well, I mean – no, it wasn’t.”

“What did you see?”

“Tiamaris,” Lord Sanabalis said, the syllables colliding in a snap of sound that implied large jaws and brimstone.

“My apologies, Lord Sanabalis.” Tiamaris turned back to Kaylin. “The Dragons have never seen what must be watched,” he told her.

“Curiosity is for the mortal,” was Sanabalis’s cool reply. “And, Kaylin?”

“Yes?” She stopped herself from adding
sir
.

“Evanton may have been unwise enough not to warn you against speaking of what you saw. It is, however, exceedingly unwise.”

She hesitated for a moment and then turned to Tiamaris. They had progressed farther into the library, and it showed no sign of ending. On the other hand, it was a fairly straight route to the exit, if the doors opened at all.

“Something was stolen from – from his care.”

She walked
into
Sanabalis, which was a lot like walking into a lumpy stone wall. The Dragon lord turned to look down at her, and he
was
looking down; all of the assumed slouch of age had deserted his spine.

“Why did you not inform me of this sooner?” Sanabalis snapped.

“Well, it’s in the report – ”

“You haven’t filed a report!”

“Well, that is – I think Severn… ” The words trailed off. “Marcus probably wouldn’t
read
the damn thing, anyway. He’s still buried under Festival writs and notifications.”

“I assure you, Private Neya, that you are wrong. In this case, you are utterly wrong.”

“I was worried about the girl – ”

“The girl is
one child,
Kaylin. If by some miracle we escape this with one death – with a hundred – we will be counted the recipient of undeserved miracles by historians a millennia hence.”

“Tiamaris, what’s going on?”

“I am not, myself, certain,” he replied carefully. “But I have been given the reports generated by days spent in the company of Oracles, and I would have to say – ”

“Nothing,” Sanabalis said coolly.

“I can’t investigate
nothing,
” she said, with a lot more heat.

“This is not a matter for the Hawks, the Swords, or the Wolves,” Sanabalis replied curtly.

“It is if – ”

“There has been no missing persons report, am I correct?”

“Well, yes, but – ”

“And there has been no writ issued for any theft?”

“We’re having a bit of difficulty classifying the item, and without classification, we don’t have a specific law to apply to – ” Her voice trailed off; his eyes were orange, with just a hint of red at their center.

But she hadn’t finished, although she really, really wanted to be. “Donalan Idis,” she said quietly. Just that.

Tiamaris frowned. “Where did you hear that name?”

“Legal history.”

“Liar.” Elantran was, Kaylin realized, not always a blessing.

“Donalan Idis
is
under the purview of the Halls of Law. A writ was issued for his retrieval, and he was never found. No countermanding writ was ever issued.”

“The writ was issued to the Wolves, I believe.”

“Who are part of the Halls of Law, and who serve it as the Hawks do.”

“What
exactly
does Donalan Idis have to do with the matter at hand? Think carefully, Kaylin. I am almost at the end of my patience.”

“I don’t know,” she replied, moving as if she were surrounded by leaping tongues of flame.

“She is telling the truth,” Tiamaris said, his voice soft, the cadences of it wrong.

Sanabalis replied in a language that Kaylin didn’t actually know. But it was loud, each syllable a roar in miniature.

“Stand behind me,” Tiamaris told her quietly.

She
moved
.

Tiamaris replied to his former master, and his voice was also lost to the sound of thunder, the roar of Dragons. She had seen Tiamaris assume his Dragon form only once, and had no desire to ever see it again.

But a third voice entered their conversation – if it could be called that – a third roar, louder in all ways than theirs.

For a moment, Kaylin thought she was dead – she thought the Emperor himself must have heard the shouting and come from Court to see what it was about.

But the Emperor had not come. Either that, or the Emperor was a compact man with a crown of hair that failed to cover his skull. He had whisper-thin whiskers that trailed from a mustache that was paler than Sanabalis’s beard.

And he commanded instant, and utter, silence.

He looked… He looked a little like Evanton, except three times his size. His skin was wreathed in lines, and those lines were decidedly not smile lines. His eyes were glowing orange, and unlidded.

He turned and looked at Kaylin the way Kaylin looked at mice. But when he spoke again, he spoke in formal Barrani. “The library is not a place for idle conversation. People come here to work in silence, and you are disturbing their studies.”

She instantly bobbed her head up and down. “I expect no better from you,” he added, without bothering to mask his disdain.

Kaylin didn’t even bridle.

“If you gentlemen wish to debate, you will find a different venue for your words. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Arkon,” Tiamaris said, bending so that his head was almost in reach of his knees.

“Good.” He turned and strode off. Stopped, his robed back toward them, and added, “I am aware that Lord Sanabalis is under a great deal of stress, so I will overlook this incident.”

“Thank you, Arkon.”

Sanabalis himself was utterly silent.

A second set of doors came as a relief to Kaylin, even with a door-ward in plain sight. This ward tingled the way normal ones did, and she touched it first, without prompting. There were definitely some things that were worse than magic.

But the doors opened into a rounded room, a squat hall with narrow windows and wide doors between them. Six sets in all, including the one that they had just exited.

Sanabalis surprised her; he bowed to her. “My apologies, Kaylin. The Arkon is of course correct.”

“Who
was
he? I thought there were only a few Lords and – ”

“He is not a Lord. He is the Arkon. These rooms, the libraries and the galleries, are his hoard. He is not young,” Sanabalis added.

“I saw that.”

“And he is not kind. If you needed a reason to disturb
nothing
without permission, you have now been given it.”

She nodded. Hesitated. “I really did forget about the theft,” she said quietly.

“Of course you did. The girl would drive almost anything sensible out of your very thick, mortal skull.” He frowned. “If we understand the Oracles correctly, however, we have two weeks left.”

“Two weeks left until what?”

“You misunderstand me. We have two weeks left, period. In two weeks there will be no Elantra. And it is highly likely that the loss of Elantra involves a great deal of water moving from one spot – the ocean that happens to front our port – to another. The fact that Everly began to draw you is either a sign of hope or a sign of doom,” he added. “It has been much discussed. I did not consider it worth mentioning until the discussions were resolved. Until you asked me about the nature of water.

“And we are coming to the gallery. I would not leave you in a library here if my hoard depended upon it.”

Gallery
was a word, like any other word.

Clearly Dragon translation, even into Barrani, left a lot to be desired. Kaylin had thought Everly’s room huge, and it was. But this? This was larger than the library. And it housed not canvas, but things older – leather hides, chunks of sheared rock, carved statues that were short a limb or three.

“You have labored under the burden of ignorance, and we have allowed it,” Sanabalis told her. He sounded like himself. Like her teacher. The Dragon was gone from his voice. Tiamaris was likewise quiet, but his eyes were a shade too amber.

“We have allowed it because we ourselves are without explanations. The marks you bear,” he added, “would be recognized by the Arkon, and perhaps by one or two others. In the history of our kind, others have borne those marks,” he said. “No, I am not being entirely accurate. Not the marks you
now
bear. They have changed, with time, and the magic of the outcaste. But the marks as they first appeared.

“You went to the High Court of the Barrani. You were privileged to witness the vulnerability of their
Leoswuld
. You were privileged to bear witness to the birth of a new High Lord. And you were stupid enough to venture into areas that you should never have seen at all.

“It is something that no Dragon would have done, had one been invited to attend. You speak little of what you witnessed, which is commendably wise on your part, if surprising. And you bear the burden of the High Court, whether you acknowledge it or not.

“But rumor has wings, as they say. You touched the source of their lives, Kaylin, and it marked you. It is a subtle mark. Tiamaris?”

“I… sense no change in her.”

“A very subtle mark,” Sanabalis said drily. “You will never bear witness to a similar ceremony among the Dragons. But Kaylin, what the Barrani possess, we also possess. What gives them life, gives us life.

“None of us are certain how the mortals arrived on our world. We are almost certain about the timing, although we may be off by as much as a century.”

“What do you mean, arrived?”

“I believe that I used the correct word.”

“Um.”

“Yes? It is safe to speak here. It is not, however, safe to touch
anything.
”

“I thought you were hatched?”

Tiamaris and Sanabalis exchanged a glance.

“To be fair,” Tiamaris said to Sanabalis, “none of the racial classes she failed concerned themselves with reproduction. I don’t believe it’s considered relevant to police work.”

“Having had her as a student for what feels like a long time, I’m disinclined to be fair.”

“So that’s a no, no eggs?”

“That’s a no, no answer,” Tiamaris replied. “And, Kaylin, neither Sanabalis nor I have forgotten the theft you spoke of. What, exactly, was taken?”

“A box. A reliquary, I think.”

The silent exchange of glances was beginning to get on her nerves.

“He said it couldn’t be opened by any key. But he also said – well, implied – that it
could
be opened by magic. He didn’t say what was in it. I don’t even know if he’s seen the inside of the box.” She paused, and then added, “I’m not really supposed to say this, but there seem to be reliquaries associated with each of the… elements. The one that was stolen – ”

“Yes, we could deduce that.”

“And this is bad because whatever threatens the city has something to do with water.”

“Good. We’ll make an excellent student of you yet. But it was not for that reason that I brought you to the galleries.”

“Okay. One more question?”

“One.” It sounded a lot like
none
.

“You and Tiamaris – you were kind of roaring at each other back there. Should I be ducking behind that statue for a bit?”

Tiamaris laughed. “We were having a discussion, Kaylin. I assure you, if there’s ever cause to duck behind that statue over there, as you so quaintly put it, you’ll know. You won’t make it
in time,
but you’ll know.”

But Kaylin was now approaching “that statue over there.” It was, as were all the pieces in this gallery, close to one of the walls; there was a plaque in front of it that said something she couldn’t actually read. It was one of the few statues that had not suffered the amputations over time that so many of the others had, although it had been worn in places so that it was almost smooth.

Standing on a pedestal that was definitely not part of its original construction, it towered above her, but had it been flush against the floor, it would only have loomed. It was missing its left ear, and the strands of stylized hair now fell like a pocked blanket down its shoulders – and possibly past them, since she couldn’t really see its back. But the right ear marked the statue as Barrani. Tall and slender, it was almost impossible to tell whether the original had been male or female, and it didn’t seem, to Kaylin’s admittedly un-tutored eye, to be something made
by
Barrani. It was too life-size for that.

And all of this was inconsequential; the Hawk saw it, catalogued it, and let it go. Because the Barrani’s arms were exposed, and the robes were cut so low they didn’t
have
a back.

Because they didn’t, because she could see the Barrani’s arms clearly, she knew why Sanabalis had brought her. They were marked with curved symbols and dots, familiar lines. They had been carved there, rather than painted or tattooed, or time would have worn them away. Almost unconsciously, she lifted one of her arms – the arm that was unfettered by heavy, pretty gold.

“Yes,” he said softly. “They are – or were – the same as the marks you first received.”

“Tiamaris – ”

“I told you that were you to show your arm to someone who could read it, you would probably not remain attached to it,” he said quietly. “There are those among our number who can read some of what is written, but they find it disquieting.”

“Why?”

“Because of this statue,” he replied softly. “The Barrani Lord who bore those marks was a legend long before Sanabalis was born. I do not know if the Barrani themselves remember him.”

“They probably don’t –
they
don’t have the statue.”

“It was not created for the Barrani,” was his quiet reply.

“Then for whom?”

“We are not entirely certain. Nor, before you ask, are we certain
by
whom.”

“Where was it found?”

“I do not believe the ruins that it was taken from even exist anymore. It is old, Kaylin.”

She nodded.

“But… ” He hesitated.

Sanabalis took over. “It is not the only idol of its kind that we are aware of. It is merely the one that was best preserved in the fall.”

“The fall?”