Cast In Secret (43 page)

Evanton,
she thought.
Hold on. We’re coming
.

The streets were not empty. They became as empty as it was possible to be, given lack of notice and a hurtling carriage, and Kaylin shouted curses at the driver when the face of a terrified man or woman flashed past the window. The children – and she had no doubt at all they existed – were too short to be caught in the window’s moving frame, proof, if the gods existed, that they had an eye for small mercies.

On the other hand, had she seen children in danger, she would probably have climbed out the window, Severn and Sanabalis notwithstanding, to push the driver off the coach seat and take over the reins. Which, given she’d never really driven a coach before, would have made things interesting. But how hard could it be?

The part of her mind that could think noted that the panic in the streets seemed to be caused entirely by the presence of a hurtling coach, and not by the presence of arcane magics and battles. Whatever was happening in Elani Street, it wasn’t visible to the untrained eye. Something to be grateful for.

It wasn’t all that far from the Oracle Hall to Elani Street, and to Kaylin’s surprise – and gratitude – Sanabalis ordered a halt when they reached the T junction at which Elani began. Or ended, depending on which way you walked the beat.

It was quiet enough on the street that the emergence of Severn, Sanabalis, and Kaylin in her not-very-cloth-heavy dress caused people who were otherwise minding their own business to stop and stare. Sanabalis didn’t seem to notice.

She looked at Severn and said, “Well, at least their morning won’t be entirely boring.”

“Boredom,” Sanabalis intoned, “is underrated.” He set the pace for their walk. It left Kaylin not quite enough breath for a rejoinder. Not that she had one ready. She picked up the skirts of her dress and trotted after him; her own legs weren’t equal to the task of matching his stride.

Severn had neither the problem of skirts nor height. But he kept pace with Sanabalis because Kaylin did, not because he walked beside the Dragon. The doors to the various shops in the street opened and closed as people entered or left, baskets on their arms. It was hot enough that wide-brimmed hats were in evidence everywhere, and Kaylin desperately wished she had one. Not that it was part of the uniform, but then again, she didn’t at the moment have a uniform, either.

The thought of facing the Quartermaster again made the temperature drop noticeably. The thought of groveling for another few weeks – if she was lucky – made her cringe.

Severn cuffed her shoulder. “Pay attention,” he said.

“I was.”

“Pay attention to where we are.”

She mumbled something that would have passed as an inaudible apology if you didn’t actually know her. Severn let it pass. Wolf or Hawk, he was used to watching the shadows, and if the sun was miserly in casting those shadows, they were still there.

But she saw nothing in them besides the occasional scuffle that could be either a mouse or a cockroach, nothing to set her teeth on edge.

They approached Evanton’s shop, and saw the sandwich board that he put out maybe once a week, when custom, as he called it, was slow. It hadn’t been blown to tinder; it hadn’t even been knocked over. It also hadn’t been repainted in about ten years, but she was used to that.

“So far so good,” she said. Sanabalis didn’t hear her. Severn, however, gave her a curt nod. He did not draw his weapon – not yet. It hung around his waist, the chain giving the illusion of being a very odd fashion statement. The blade was in its sheath at Severn’s thigh. Her own daggers – damn it all to hell! – were still conspicuously absent. And she’d reached for them as they approached the familiar windows, the familiar closed door.

The curtains were pulled to either side of a window that, like the sandwich board, had seen better days. Sunlight reflected their images, as if this were a poor mirror. To see in, you had to touch the window, press your face underneath your hand, and squint.

Which, of course, was beneath the dignity of a Dragon lord. Kaylin had long since decided that dignity of this particular kind was overrated. She put the sides of both hands on the glass and pressed her face against it, peering into the clutter of Evanton’s shop.

Inside, it looked pretty much as it had always looked.

“I don’t see Evanton,” she told her companions. “But if there was some sort of fight here, it ended damn quickly.”

“You sense no magic?”

“None. You?”

“It pains me to admit that I do not have your sensitivity to magical auras,” Sanabalis replied gravely. “And the Keeper’s abode is… not a place where one wishes to introduce foreign magic.”

“If there’s magic in here,” she said as she pulled away from the window, “it’s all normal.”

Severn raised a brow. She grimaced; she seldom used the words
magic
and
normal
in any sentences that were side by side.

“The door, Corporal?” Sanabalis said quietly.

Severn walked to the door, the glass pane bearing its familiar arch of letters above the wooden slats from which a brass handle protruded. If the sandwich board was on display, it meant the door was unlocked. But in theory it
also
meant that Evanton was available for odd jobs, services, and the stupid “magic” that people often sought from him. Severn gripped the brass handle and pulled.

The door swung open. “It’s not locked,” he told Lord Sanabalis. He walked in. Kaylin, standing behind the Dragon lord, waited. And waited. And waited.

Finally, exasperated, she said, “Sanabalis, move.”

Sanabalis turned to look down on her. It seemed a long way for his gaze to drop. She had the grace to redden, although she resented the momentary embarrassment; Teela was a lord of the High Court, and she talked to Teela that way.

Clearing her throat, she said, “Lord Sanabalis, the store is clearly open. Why are you blocking the door?” She chose to speak in High Barrani. It was hard to offend someone by accident in the Court tongue – although for reasons that weren’t obvious it could be done; in High Barrani, the context made the most exquisitely polite of sentences deadly insults. For that reason, she spoke it as little as humanly possible.

“My apologies, Lord Kaylin,” Sanabalis said, replying in the same language, which pretty much guaranteed that he would use the title she found so awkward. “But it has been… many, many years since a Dragon lord was allowed to cross the threshold of the Keeper’s abode.”

“You were waiting for an invitation?”

“Exactly.”

Severn came back. “If you feel you must wait for an invitation, Lord Sanabalis, I fear you will wait a long time.” His High Barrani was flawless, and trust him to slide right into it. To Kaylin, he added, “He’s not here.”

Kaylin sidled around Sanabalis. “I don’t need an invitation,” she told him, dropping into Elantran again.

“You have never been a threat.”

She stepped through the door that Severn held open, crossing the threshold. No magic. “I doubt that you would be considered a threat today,” she said. “We don’t
have time
for social niceties.” She remembered to add the word
please
to the end of her frustrated sentence. Damn Dragons, anyway.

But Lord Sanabalis waited in the door frame.

Fine. “Did you check the kitchen?”

“The kitchen, the back parlor, the other side of his bar.”

“He calls it a desk.”

“His very long and very heavily built desk, then. He’s not in any of the unlocked rooms, and knocking on locked supply rooms didn’t seem to have much effect.”

They stared at each other for a moment.

“Sana – Lord Sanabalis.”

Sanabalis raised a peppered brow.

“I take all consequences for your behavior while you are in this establishment upon my own shoulders. I will stop you from doing anything that you are not allowed, by Evanton, to do.”

He waited for another moment, and she snorted.

“I give my word.”

And curse it, damn it all, she felt a surge of magic then.

To her surprise – a sour sort of surprise, really – Sanabalis actually chuckled. “Ever impulsive, Kaylin. However, if the Keeper is not present in body, he was obviously aware of your vow. He either has great faith in you, or he has a sense of humor that suits you.”

“Either that,” Severn added, “or he’s desperate.”

Sanabalis crossed the threshold, and Severn stepped out into the street, lifting the sandwich board by its hinges so that it swung flat. He tucked it under his arm, almost hit Kaylin as he maneuvered his way back into the shop, and placed it against a wall.

Well, if she were honest, against a shelf that had enough dust it was hard to tell what the dust covered. He then closed the door firmly behind them.

“I think it best that the shop be closed for business for now.”

Kaylin nodded. When Severn rejoined her she said, “He’s in the garden, isn’t he?”

“That would be my guess.”

“There’s a slight problem with that.”

“Would it have to do with a key?”

She nodded.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a ring that would have easily fit around his shoulder. Around it were a familiar set of keys.

“You found those?”

Severn nodded.

“Where?”

“Oddly enough, in the kitchen.”

“On the table?”

“Not exactly.”

“Then – ”

“There was a tin that also contained biscuits,” he replied, giving her an odd look. “It was there.”

Kaylin had the grace to flush. “Look, it’s been
years
since I’ve wandered into his kitchen and helped myself to his food. And I hardly ever did it – only when he and Teela started one of their long, boring discussions about beads or crystals or magic.”

“How many years?”

“Never mind.”

Sanabalis was staring at her.

“What?” she said, knowing she sounded a great deal more defensive than was appropriate.

“You wandered into the Keeper’s private kitchen and stole his food?”

“They were biscuits, and they weren’t
that
good.”

“And she was probably hungry,” Severn added. She stepped on his foot.

“He meant for you to find these,” Sanabalis said. It was almost a question.

“I think he meant for Kaylin to find them,” Severn replied. “Given where she was likely to look, and given that food might be a target of opportunity, and given, last, the erratic way she eats meals, it would have been the simplest choice.”

“But the container was not magicked in any way?”

Severn shook his head. He held out the keys to Kaylin, and she took them.

“Are you ready?” he asked her softly, and this time he did unsheathe the blade that was attached to the chain.

“Hardly,” she said bitterly, holding out hands that were empty of anything but an oversize dangling key ring.

“We can get you new daggers,” he told her.

“I know. And I know it’s stupid to worry about them. But Severn – they were the first thing I – they were mine.”

“You won’t have them. I could give you mine – ”

“But if I need your daggers, I’m probably already dead.”

“That was my thought.”

She took a deep breath, and then walked over to the narrow door that nested between two overtall shelves. It was easy to miss it amid the clutter – and she had to pull a chair or two out of the way just to clear enough of a path for Sanabalis to get to it.

Once there, she chose a key and put it in the lock. Then she chose another. The lock clicked open, and Kaylin pushed the narrow door ajar. “This way,” she whispered to Sanabalis.

“Lead,” he told her carefully. “I will say or touch nothing, but I will follow.”

The back halls of the shop were exactly as she remembered them – too narrow to fight in with anything but daggers or fists. They were not high ceilinged, and they were not decorated for show; no paintings hung here, and no paper covered the flat, dull surfaces of wood that had seen better days.

But as she walked down hall, she reached for her daggers again – and cursed again. Because the hall wasn’t empty, and standing in front of the only door at its end was someone she didn’t recognize.

A young man, older than she was, younger than Severn, and shorter, as well. He was not built for fighting, and he wasn’t dressed for it, either – he was dressed, in her opinion, for a life of begging on the open streets. But he stood facing them, and he carried a dagger. The way he waved it made her wince with embarrassment for him.

His hair was dark and his eyes were a honeyed shade that looked familiar.

After a moment, approaching him cautiously – and not just because he held a naked blade – she said a single word.

“Grethan.”

His eyes widened slightly at the sound of his name, which told Kaylin that it
was
his name. And that he could hear. He couldn’t, in her opinion, do much damage with that knife; given that Severn and Sanabalis were his two opponents, she altered that opinion. He couldn’t do much damage to someone
else
.

But she couldn’t somehow imagine that Grethan, disheveled, dirty, and obviously teetering on the brink of a very narrow edge, had come into Evanton’s shop and pulled a knife on him. Or rather, that the knife itself had had much effect beyond that of extraneous punctuation to a verbal threat. Someone else’s threat.

“Boy,” Severn said, speaking softly as he inched forward, “do you understand what you’re doing?”

Grethan looked confused, as if the question made no sense. And to give him this much credit, Kaylin thought it was a pretty stupid question herself. He was standing there with a knife in front of a closed door, barring the way. Hard not to know you were doing that.

“What he wants to say,” she said instead, “is do you know what Donalan Idis is doing behind your back?”

Severn shot her a rather sharp look, but most of his attention was on Grethan.

“Yes,” Grethan said quietly.

“And it was important enough for you to kidnap one of your own children and hand her to him?”