Cast in Chaos. Michelle Sagara
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Every so often he glared over the top of a curling fold. At least one session was partially illegible because either someone with wet hands had picked it up, or it had been put down, briefly, in water. Or worse.
To prevent Kaylin from being too amused, Sanabalis handed her the occasional bit he couldn’t read. She took them with gratitude, since it was better than doing nothing, and safer than mocking a Dragon Lord. Especially given the lack of sleep. Kaylin, reading the various notes, cringed. She had an easier time interpreting Sigrenne’s scrawl, but because she had no context, it was hard to guess what the words she couldn’t read meant.
But she understood enough. In many of these dreams, there were visitors. Some were monsters. Some were ghosts. Some were—she thought the words were stray kittens, which caused some head scratching.
“How the hell does Sigrenne know that it’s an Oracle and not a normal dream?” she muttered.
“She probably doesn’t,” was the curt reply. “Which means she has to take as many notes as possible. It isn’t all Sigrenne’s writing. Some of it is probably Notann’s. The one that looks like a series of ink blots is almost certainly Weller’s. When the Oracles dream like this, one person is not going to get to all of them in time. I have another door-locker.”
She glanced across the carriage. “No, that’s the same one. That’s Tylia. Her name’s up in the left corner.” She caught a few words, and added, “but that’s more detailed than she was. There’s a door but no walls. Oh.”
“Oh?”
“Well, the lack of walls means the sky is falling, and Tylia can’t find a roof to hide under. See, there. That lines up with Everly’s painting.”
“Possibly. This is merely our attempt to understand why, and perhaps where, some future difficulty must be intercepted. I will let you out at your own Halls. I would take you to the Palace, but the Arkon dislikes interruption and you are not the quietest of visitors. You possibly also have a job, or several, to do.”
The guards at either set of doors were tense enough that the usual good-natured mockery failed to occur. Kaylin missed it.
The office wasn’t quiet. The window wasn’t impressed; it was hard to tell which was louder. Marcus was bristling, which, given the state of emergency, was expected. Caitlin was quiet and grim. Not a single groundhawk could be seen in the office, not even Severn.
“Neya!” Marcus shouted.
She walked past the duty roster, glanced at it, and shuddered. The fact that she could read it at all, given that there were now more changes than there had been original postings, was due to thirteen years of experience with the way Marcus’s writing was affected by his moods. One thing was clear: all of the Hawks were out on patrol, and it was a very tight patrol: it centered in the section of city that featured Elani at its core.
“The Swords,” Marcus told her, as she approached his desk, “have been ordered to begin evacuation.” He stabbed a piece of paper on his desk. It was the map of the streets that lay within the two circles. There were holes at the corners of a square area within the circle itself. “They’re starting at Strathanne, between Highpost and Delbaranne. They’re clearing straight through to Lattimar.”
She opened her mouth in order to let at least one question out; he flexed his claws. It was one of his more serious versions of shut up. He did, however, answer the question. “While you were out, Lord Diarmat of the Dragon Court mirrored. The Imperial Order of Mages tendered the report from their initial exploratory investigation.”
“Good or bad?”
“If you’re a member of the Imperial Order’s scouting forces, bad.”
She closed her eyes. “How many did they lose?”
“One death. Three casualties.”
His tone of voice made death seem like the better deal. She schooled her expression. “Did they transmit the Imperial Records information here?”
“No. Lord Diarmat didn’t feel it was necessary, and frankly, it is not my problem. I don’t need to worry about mages right now. The Arcanists are, in theory, the Swords’ problem. Teela has gone, by way of the Barrani High Halls, to deliver the news.”
“What news?”
“We’re sealing off the portion of the city the Swords are now evacuating. We’ve set up roadblocks and guards on all routes in and out. Evacuation should take three days at the outside. Teela is at the Halls. Tain and the rest of our crew are spread out among the Swords.”
The Swords were going to love that.
“Why?”
“Because the Arcanists are now interested, and one or two of them are causing the Swords some difficulties. While I’d like to resolve it by jailing them,” he said in a tone of voice that made jail and death synonymous, “we are understaffed. If it were up to the Lord of Swords, we’d be extending the blockade to the full perimeter of the outer circle.”
“We can’t,” she said, voice flat.
“Funny, that’s what I told him. The perimeter would include the Halls and the Palace. The Emperor declined the Swordlord’s request, and this is the compromise. I can see why he doesn’t like it. We can keep the Arcanists out of this area. We have no hope of keeping them out of the circle. The Emperor had implied that he’d just keep them locked in their damn tower.”
“On what charges?”
“Not my problem.”
She snorted. It would be, if they tried. Still, the Arcanists would be vastly less likely to cause trouble for Barrani Hawks, and if they were babysitting the Swords, the roadblock would probably not spontaneously—and conveniently—combust. Kaylin nodded grimly. “Where do you want me?”
“You’re up on the roster.”
She bit her lip; it prevented suicidal words from emerging. “I’ll check now,” she told him. She was relatively certain it wouldn’t take too damn long to find her name in the hideous mess of ink and pencil marks.
“Good. Go.” He paused, and then added, “You might want to remove your bracer and toss it somewhere.”
She’d found her name. It was beside Severn’s, and was, in fact, their regular Elani beat. “You’re sure?”
“We have Imperial Permission,” the Leontine replied, and she caught the brief flash of teeth that was their version of black humor. “Lord Diarmat looked like he’d just found out he’d been put on a vegetarian diet when he delivered it.”
Leontines, in theory, held Dragons in high regard. It was no wonder that fact had come as a huge surprise to Kaylin, because Marcus did not. “Lord Diarmat was difficult?” she asked.
“Stop gabbing, and get moving.”
Kaylin had once or twice in her seven years with the Hawks—admittedly most of them as unofficial mascot—seen roadblocks and quarantines within Elantra. They were mostly put in place to contain outbreaks of summer wasting sicknesses, but not always. Occasionally the Arcanists on the Wolf hit list didn’t bother to make a break for the outer walls or the fiefs; they headed into extremely crowded areas and attempted to hold out by using sorcery, with whole city blocks as hostages.
This was like the latter case, except there were no Arcanists you could kill to end the threat.
The roadblock was going up when she slid through. On this side of the square, the Arcanists wouldn’t be a problem, so there were no Hawks here. She nodded, briefly, and headed straight for Elani.
Since she had no way of signaling Severn when she reached Elani, she did a quick perusal of the street. The Swords had arrived, and they were, even now, knocking on doors. One Sword carried a very long, very ornate roll, around which was wrapped a long scroll. The writing on the scroll itself couldn’t be