Cast In Secret (44 page)

Silence.

“Grethan, do you
know
what Idis did, while he was in the Imperial Service?” For it came to her suddenly that, without the Tha’alaan, he wouldn’t.

“He served the Emperor,” the boy said defiantly.

“Yes, but doing what?”

“He taught the Emperor about the Tha’alani,” Grethan replied, as if by rote. “He told the Emperor what
we
could do, and how
we
could serve.”

“Is that what he told you?”

Grethan’s eyes narrowed. “He came close to understanding,” he hissed. “He came close enough to understanding the Tha’alaan that he could
touch
it.”

“Grethan – ”

“But the Tha’alani were jealous. They didn’t
want
the deaf to be able to touch the Tha’alaan.”

Kaylin closed her eyes. “That’s what he told you? And why did he tell you to take the child?”

“Because he hadn’t finished,” Grethan replied. “She hasn’t been hurt. I saw to that. I wouldn’t let him hurt her.”

“You
haven’t
seen to that,” Kaylin snarled, sudden in her anger. “You’re
here
. You have
no idea
what he’s doing to her now.”

“He was one of my only friends,” Grethan snarled back, just as angry. “When I came here – when I – he was there.

“And he didn’t
pity
me. He understood that I had been born crippled. He promised that he could
heal
me. But he couldn’t heal me because the Emperor stopped his work. The Tha’alani stopped his work – don’t you see? They’re special, they’ve always known they’re special, and they
don’t want to give that up
. They agreed to work for the Emperor if men like Master Idis were forbidden their research.
They want us to be deaf!
”

“Is that what he told you?” She couldn’t stop herself from gaping, but words kind of helped.

“It’s the truth!”

“And the truth was reason enough to kidnap and
torture
a child?”

Silence, then. Grethan’s face, however, was not still. It was flushed, and the muscles of his jaw were flapping like Kaylin’s, but without the attendant sound.

Right up until that moment, she’d been prepared to pity him. To even sympathize with him. But she saw the knowledge in his suddenly averted gaze. She knew that he could lie to himself – about what was done, or how, or why – that he could tell himself that in the end, the nebulous bloody
end
that justified all means, Mayalee would be
all right.

But she was done with sympathy now. She was almost done with petty things like law. She felt her arms begin to tingle, felt the itch of something dangerously like magic begin to encompass her whole body.

And Lord Sanabalis stepped in, grabbing her shoulder. Light flared, blue and hot; Kaylin bit back a cry. But in spite of the shock of pain that must have gone through both of them, he didn’t let go until he had pushed her to one side. To Severn’s side, actually.

Severn’s touch was gentle, and he was careful to avoid the marks. “Kaylin?” She met his gaze briefly; she didn’t want to distract either Severn or herself. But brief was enough to see everything he wouldn’t expose in words: his fear for her, his fear of the power that the marks contained, his reminder that she no longer wore the bracer that would keep all that wild power at bay.

It calmed her, somehow. She took a deep breath, held it, and let go. The back of her neck stopped the particular ache that spoke of her own magic.

Lord Sanabalis drew himself to his full height, and he let the lower membranes fall from his very, very orange eyes. He spoke Elantran, but the Elantran he spoke was not Elantran as Kaylin knew it – it was pinned to the hearing by the low and loud sound of rumbling.

Dragon’s voice.

Grethan brandished an infinitely pathetic dagger in front of his chest, his eyes darting from side to side as if somehow escape would magically appear.

“Do you know who I am, boy?” Sanabalis asked.

Grethan said nothing.

“Do you know
what
I am?”

And even Grethan, sheltering with such ferocious tenacity in his own ignorance, could not pretend that Sanabalis was anything other than a Dragon.

“You can’t stop him,” Grethan whispered. He might have shouted, but he’d lost the capacity.

“You are in the way,” Sanabalis replied. “And I serve the Emperor directly. If you value your life,
come here
.”

It wasn’t what Kaylin had expected him to say.

But had she been Grethan, she would have moved.

Grethan, terrified, took two halting steps forward.

“I would kill you,” the Dragon said – and there was almost nothing left of the Sanabalis who calmly watched Kaylin’s continual failure in their lessons, “but I am sworn to the Emperor, and the Emperor has his Laws. These two are Hawks. They are your witnesses, and you had best hope they survive, because if they don’t, boy, you won’t.”

Grethan started to say something, his knuckles white around a dagger that would – at best – scratch Sanabalis.

“What you want,” Kaylin began, speaking in a voice that was now entirely normal, “isn’t wrong. But how you get what you want – Grethan, she’s a terrified child, away from her parents. Forget that she can’t reach the Tha’alaan – she’s alone, here, and the only person whom she trusts, or whom she thought she could trust, is working for the man who – ” She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest. Not without losing it. “What he told you – it’s not the truth.”

“IT IS
THE
TRUTH!”

He’d grown up in a world where no one lied. He’d fled it to the safety of a world where almost everyone did. She tried to remember this. She tried damn hard.

Sanabalis, however, reached into a fold of… nothing, as far as Kaylin could see, which would normally have been disturbing, and pulled out a crystal with a heart of fire. Memory crystal, she thought, and then, looking at it more closely, thought,
That one?

“This is the truth, boy. If you want the truth, take it.”

“You’re lying – ”

“Am I?” He held the crystal out in the palm of his hand. “Do you know how the crystals work? You must have seen their like in the company of your master.”

Grethan was stiff jawed, almost wild. “You can make them say anything – ”

“They record what happens,” he replied. “There are magicks built into them at their making that force this, and further, make them immune to tampering. And this one was requested by the two Hawks who now stand beside me. There is a reason that Donalan Idis is feared and hated by your kin, and it is not your reason.”

“I don’t hate them!”

“No?”

“I want to
belong,
don’t you understand? I
want
what I should have had at birth!”

Home, Kaylin thought. She closed her eyes. She would not pity this man. She would not give in.

Sanabalis however, continued to speak as if there had been no interruption. “You want the truth. It is here. And yes, it is a crystal taken from the archives of the Imperial Service.”

For another second, he hesitated, and it was Severn who said, “If we meant to go through the door without first giving you a chance to understand the danger you have placed us all in, you would be dead now.”

Grethan swallowed. And then he held out one hand, not the dagger hand. It was shaking so much Kaylin wondered how he could keep it up at all. But Sanabalis had no mercy in him. He dropped the crystal into the boy’s hand.

Grethan’s eyes rolled up, exposing only whites, as he fell to his knees. He didn’t release the dagger, and Severn caught him at the last moment to make certain he didn’t land on the damn thing.

“The door, Kaylin,” he said, the previous calm swamped by urgency. “Now.”

She stepped over Grethan’s prone form. “Was that really the memory crystal?” she asked the Dragon as she fumbled with the key.

“Yes. Dragons generally do not stoop to lie. It is far more effort than killing.”

“Huh. Then why are the Barrani so good at it?”

His broad shrug was all of his answer.

Grethan began to scream.

Kaylin almost dropped the key ring at the shock of it. She wanted to hate this boy. She
did
despise him. But some part of her understood him, and if it wasn’t a part she was proud of, it didn’t bloody well matter. She found the right key, slid it into the lock, and twisted.

The click was somehow louder than the screaming.

Were it not for the fact that Dragons weighed a good deal more than their human form suggested, Kaylin would have been blown down the hall. As it was, howling wind knocked her back into Lord Sanabalis’s chest. He put one arm around her to hold her in place, and shouted something to Severn. Given how close his mouth was to her ear, she should have heard it – but the wind was strong enough that the words were swept away.

Folds of white fabric were likewise lifted and carried by the wind, fanning flat against Sanabalis as if they were wet. But Sanabalis stepped forward, into the wind’s roar, and this time, Kaylin
did
hear what he said. Or rather, she heard his roar. It was low, loud, and appeared to be endless, as if roaring itself required nothing at all but will – no air, for instance, and no breath.

Her eyes were tearing; she had to close them as Sanabalis made headway through a door that was barely wide enough to grant him entrance. If
this
was the way the garden said “no visitors,” Kaylin decided she was never going to bring a Dragon back.

Inch by inch Sanabalis struggled to clear the narrow frame’s threshold, and she clung to him as he walked, her own feet dangling above the ground.

But when his second foot was firmly on the green earth in the garden, the wind died. Severn, his hair slanted almost sideways across his face, stepped out from behind Sanabalis.

Sanabalis in turn set Kaylin gently down on her own feet. “My apologies,” he said, his voice quieter than usual.

“For what?”

“I believe that was the garden’s greeting.”

“It didn’t do that when we visited last time.”

“You were in the company of the Keeper.” He lifted his hands and held them open, palm up, in the stillness of the air. He looked up, as Kaylin had first done, at the boundless blue of sky. To her surprise, he smiled.

The garden hadn’t been small on the inside. But now – now it appeared vast. Kaylin turned to look at the door they’d entered, and wasn’t particularly surprised when she couldn’t see it. She shoved the key ring into Severn’s hands, as her own dress didn’t have much room for storage.

“We will not require them, now,” Sanabalis told them both.

“It wasn’t
like
this – ”

“Oh, hush, child. Can you not pause a moment at the sheer wonder of this place?”

“We don’t live forever. Minutes count.”

Severn touched her shoulder. “Can you see anyone else?”

“No.”

“Can you sense anyone else?”

“No.” She paused, and then said, reluctantly, “No.”

“He is here,” Sanabalis told them both quietly.

“Idis?”

“The Keeper. And Idis, yes.”

“How can you tell?”

“The garden has almost reverted to its true form,” he replied. “And if it has, the Keeper has withdrawn his power. He has either used it, or he hoards it. But he no longer spends it holding the elements to their quiet shape.”

“I think we’d better hurry,” Kaylin said. She looked to Severn for guidance, and he shrugged. “Sanabalis?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m not sure which way to go.”

“Forward,” the Dragon replied, and began to walk.

Kaylin very gratefully fell in behind him, Severn by her side. The problem with magic was that it dropped hints at its own convenience, not hers. She could rely on her training, on her abilities to fight – or to know when a fight was just death waiting to happen. She could rely on her ability to read, and occasionally, to make sense of the maps the Aerians had drawn for the use of the Halls of Law. She could even rely on her knowledge of the Laws themselves. But a few marks on her arms that occasionally itched – or worse – gave her nothing solid to stand on. They were like the window displays in the shops that only the very, very wealthy could enter. All that promise of finery, and none of where she wanted it to be when she wanted it.

Unlike Severn. Or Marcus. Or any of the other Hawks.

If they managed to do whatever it was they had to do here, it would be
because
of the solid, everyday people she could count on. Yes, even Sanabalis, who was walking so fast she had to sprint to keep pace.

The grass grew wild; Sanabalis flattened a path through it by the simple expedient of weight. Here and there, weeds had flowered, striking in their colors and chaos. These, too, he trampled underfoot. Kaylin did the same, cringing as she jogged. But the grass grew shorter and sparser as they walked, and the sun – if it
was
a sun – loomed larger and larger. No moons here, the full height of day. Not for the first time, Kaylin wished she’d brought a hat. It was
hot
.

“Yes,” Sanabalis said, as if reading her mind. “It is hot here. And the heat is dangerous for both of you. It is not humid. It is much, much warmer now than it was in the streets of Elantra.”

“We can’t get out of the heat. There’s no shade.”

Sanabalis nodded grimly. “None,” he replied. “But there are no fires yet. The Keeper still holds this ground, Kaylin. Some of his power lingers here.”

“How can you tell?”

“How can you not?”

She started to say something, bit back the words, and concentrated.
What is the shape of fire?

Sanabalis smacked the back of her head, as if she were an errant child. “Do
not
think that here! Kaylin, it is a wonder to me that you survived to be a Hawk. In the safety of the West Room, it is impossible to get you to speak in complete, coherent sentences, let alone concentrate on your studies.

“But
here,
where it would be insanity, you suddenly become studious?”

Rubbing the back of her head – and the goose egg she was certain was growing there – she mumbled an apology.