Cast in Chaos. Michelle Sagara
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“Tell me where this child was born,” Kaylin said, in a tone of voice that indicated she had a good idea. Marya’s answer confirmed her suspicions. “Can I use your mirror?” she asked, although she’d already walked behind the desk and tapped it with her palm.
“Yes, but use it quickly. Given the incidents tonight, I want an entirely open channel.”
Kaylin nodded. She waited for the mirror to blur, and when the image shifted from reflection to communication, she saw that Marcus was, as she suspected he would be, still in the office. So was Caitlin. So, she thought, were a number of Hawks, although it looked like they were mostly Barrani. The Barrani didn’t exactly need sleep.
“Marcus—”
“Where the hell are you?”
“Midwives’ guild.”
“You went to the Palace?”
“Yes. And I’m due in at the office first thing to head back to the Oracles’ Hall. With Sanabalis.”
“First thing?”
“Yes. I’m considering skipping sleep entirely.” She caught Caitlin’s expression, and added, “Just joking. But I need you to send something across to this mirror, now.”
Marcus looked as tired and frazzled as Kaylin felt, and he bared his fangs at the tone of her voice. But that was all he did; he didn’t even give her a knee-jerk refusal. Instead, he said, “Please don’t tell me that this is affecting births.”
“If you don’t want to hear it, I’ll write it up when I make my report.”
“I’ll have to read that.”
“Eventually.” She glanced pointedly at the piles that could be seen teetering on his desk in the distance. “I need Marya to have a map, so she’ll have a good idea of where things are likely to—to go bad.”
“Done. It is not to be transmitted beyond the guild’s mirror.”
Marya, who had wedged herself into the frame’s view beside Kaylin, nodded, and the mirror instantly blanked in that way that implied something more pleasant than angry Leontine face was about to appear. What did appear was the city map, complete with two circles. “Make the inner circle brighter,” Kaylin told the mirror.
The mirror complied.
Reaching out, she hit the two places on the map where the unusual births had occurred. “Mark and record.”
“What is the circle?” Marya asked softly.
“No one’s certain. You were probably busy enough to miss the whole rain of blood thing. I wasn’t,” she added.
“That’s why you looked as if—”
“I’d fallen into an abattoir? Yeah. It caused a lot of panic, no surprise. The Swords are still patrolling the streets within this boundary. Things have happened within the boundary that imply that there’s some kind of—of—wild magic.” Kaylin, who didn’t entirely understand the concept of a “potential leak” was not up to explaining it to anyone else.
“Is it going to grow?”
The thought had occurred to Kaylin. “I don’t know. We know it’s been in place for at least a day. We have no idea how large the area was when the…unusual disturbances started. We wouldn’t actually know for certain how large the circle was if it weren’t for the rain, so we’re grateful for it. The Swords, on the other hand, have no reason for gratitude, and I imagine they aren’t.”
She moved away from the mirror to give Marya some space to actually sit down; Marya did, pulling a ledger from a desk drawer and flipping it open. “How many women are going to give birth in that circle within the next, say, two weeks?”
“I’m looking at the next four weeks at the moment,” Marya replied, without looking up. She flipped back and forth between pages, made notes, and added her own square fingerprints to the map’s image, pausing to magnify streets where it became necessary. “Within four weeks,” she finally said, “this is what we’ve got.”
Not every pregnant woman came to the guildhall, but most did; the guildhall received its share of donations, and it could afford to do work for next-to-nothing. “Twelve?”
“Ten. You’re counting the two you marked.”
“Good. Can you get them out of there?”
Marya lifted the ledger. “Ahead of you there. Do you think this magic has affected the actual pregnancy, or does it just manifest itself at birth?”
“I honestly don’t know, but we’ve got nothing to lose by relocating them. If it’s the pregnancy, they’re still in the same predicament. If it’s the birth, they’re safe.”
“My thinking, as well.” She looked tired. “Will you be home if something goes wrong?”
“Yes. But the first thing I do in the morning is meet with a Dragon Lord.”
“Your morning?”
“No, sadly. The real morning. We’ll be leaving the Halls of Law immediately, and heading out to the Oracles. If anything comes up—anything at all—mirror there.”
To say that she was tired when the Halls of Law appeared around the corner would have been so inaccurate she didn’t bother. She made one stop on her jog to the Halls, and came away with three stuffed buns from a baker’s stall. That, and enough change to throw into a wishing well without worrying about lost money.
She’d had the usual restless sleep that occurs between the hours of way-too-damn-late and dawn. Because she knew that Sanabalis would be seriously pissed off if she was late, the mirror’s chime actually woke her.
Sanabalis was waiting in the office. She was bleary-eyed enough that she didn’t actually note who was on door duty.
“Kaylin?” Caitlin said from her desk nearest the office doors. “Were you at the guild last night?”
Kaylin nodded.
Clearly, it was the wrong kind of nod. “There were problems?”
“Yes.” She headed straight for Marcus’s desk, and only in part because Sanabalis was seated, more or less quietly, in front of it. The Dragon Lord looked up as she came to stand just in front of him.
“Sergeant.”
Marcus had seen her enter the office. “What happened last night?”
“We had two births. One baby born with three eyes. One born speaking. In full sentences.”
“None born with two heads?” Sanabalis asked. She didn’t appreciate his sense of humor and turned to tell him as much, but when she caught sight of his expression, she bit back the unfortunate words just before they could leave her mouth.
“Why are you asking? What have you found?”
“I found nothing that might point in that direction,” he replied. “The Arkon, however, has spent the entirety of the evening poring over some of his private collection, and he extracted some information that might be of use to us.”
“Two-headed babies?”
“Yes. They were not, however, human, if that’s any comfort.”
“Not really.” She paused. “What were they?”
“Barrani.”
“What happened to them? No, never mind. I really don’t want to know.” She turned back to her Sergeant. “Marya’s moving any of the women who are pregnant and might go into labor. She can only move the ones she knows about.”
He nodded. “You have an appointment with the Oracles.”
“Could you—”
“I’ll