Cast in Silence. Michelle Sagara
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He brought his mug to his mouth, and then lowered it again without taking a sip.
“Does this happen often?”
“No.”
“But it’s happened before.”
“Yes.”
When Evanton was monosyllabic, it was not a good sign. “Can I ask when?”
“You can ask.”
“Evanton—”
“You know far more about this garden than anyone who isn’t a Keeper, or who isn’t trying to learn how to be one, has a right to know.”
“And you’re not about to add to that.”
“Actually, I would very dearly love not to add to that, but I am, in fact, about to do just that. What you actually understand about the garden is not my problem. That you understand that this is significant, however, is.”
“Why me?”
“That would be the question,” he replied.
“I haven’t done anything recently. Honest.”
“No. You probably haven’t. But something is happening in the city, and the elements feel it. They’re not,” he added, “very happy about it, either.”
“No kidding. Why do you think it has anything to do with me?”
“Because,” he replied, lifting his hands, “if you take the time to observe some of the visual phenomena, it’s not entirely random. The elements are trying to talk.”
Given the lack of any obvious visibility in the driving sheets of rain, Kaylin thought this comment unfair. Given Evanton’s mood, Kaylin chose not to point this out. While she was struggling to stop herself from doing so, Evanton’s hands began to glow.
Out of the light that surrounded them, a single complicated image coalesced on the tabletop, between their cups. It was golden in color, and it wasn’t a picture. It was a word.
An old word. Kaylin’s eyes widened as she looked at it.
“Yes,” he said, as her glance strayed to her sleeves, or rather, to her arms. “It’s written in the same language as the marks you bear.”
Those marks ran the length of her arms, her inner thighs and most of her back; they now also trailed up her spine and into her hair. She had toyed with the idea of shaving her head to see exactly how far up they went, but she’d never gotten around to it. Her hair was her one vanity. Or at least, she thought ruefully, her one acknowledged vanity.
Something about the lines of the word were familiar, although Kaylin was pretty certain she’d never seen it before. She wasn’t in the office, and she had no mirror; she couldn’t exactly call up records to check.
“You know what this means,” Evanton said anyway.
She shook her head. “No, actually, I—” And then she stopped, as the niggling sense of familiarity coalesced. “Ravellon.”
He closed his eyes.
The silence lasted a few minutes, broken by the sound people made—or Kaylin did, at any rate—when drinking liquid that was just shy of scalding. Eventually, she set the cup down. “You recognize the name.”
“Yes. I would not have recognized it, however, from this rune.”
“You can read them?”
“I have never made them my study; I am old, yes, but not that old.”
She lifted her cup, watching him, and after a moment, he snorted. “I can, as you must know, read some of the Old Tongue. This, however, was not familiar to me.”
“You don’t know the history of Elantra?”
“I know the history of the city very well,” he replied. His voice was the type of curt that could make you bleed.
Since Kaylin had lived for most of her twenty-odd years in ignorance of this history, she shrugged.
“I know what once stood at the heart of the fiefs.” He lifted a veined and wrinkled hand in her direction. “And before you ask, no, I don’t have any idea what’s there now. It’s slightly farther afield than I’m generally prepared to go at my age. But yes, I know it was once called Ravellon by the Barrani.”
“And the Dragons,” Kaylin pointed out.
“At the moment, my interactions with the Eternal Emperor’s Court are exactly none. The one exception to my very firm rule, you already know, and no exception would have been made had I not been indisposed.”
While she technically served the Emperor’s law, the law was a distinct entity. That the Emperor held himself above those laws was a given; he didn’t, however, require Kaylin to do the same. Of course, if he contravened those laws and she spoke up, she’d be a pile of ash.
Evanton contravened those laws by simply existing, as far as Kaylin could tell. For practical reasons, reducing Evanton to a pile of smoldering ash was not in the Emperor’s cards, and if she’d had to bet, she’d bet that the Emperor wasn’t entirely happy about it, either. The elemental garden, with Evanton as its Keeper, was literally a different world—with unfortunate placement: it demonstrably existed within the boundaries of the Empire, and the Dragon Emperor claimed everything in the Empire as his personal hoard, the single exception being the fiefs.
Dragons were very, very precise about their hoards. Kaylin didn’t understand all the nuances of what, to her mind, boiled down to mine, mine, mine, but she was assured that they existed. By, of course, other Dragons.
The store, however, could not be moved. And if it ceased to exist, the elemental wilderness contained behind one rickety door at the end of a dim and incredibly cluttered hall, would break free and return to the world from which it had been extracted. Which would pretty much end most of the lives that Kaylin cared about, although to be fair, it would probably end the other ones, as well.
The Emperor, therefore, overlooked this thumbing-of-nose at his ownership and his authority.
Evanton’s reluctance to talk with Dragons made sense. Their reluctance to speak with him, she understood less well.
He opened his mouth, and snapped it shut again. He still had all his teeth. “Ravellon,” he said, after a long pause, “is a Barrani word.”
“I don’t think so,” she began.
“It’s not the Old Tongue, then. Can we agree on that?”
Since he probably knew more than she did, she nodded.
“But you recognized the rune as Ravellon. Why?”
“I don’t know. Don’t look at me like that, Evanton. I honestly don’t. I’m not even your student—why would I try to make your life more difficult?”
“Good point. I should apologize for my temper. I won’t, but I should. It has been a very, very trying day.”
“Why is it only the three elements? Why not all four?”
“Fire in the natural world is contained, for the most part. If we were living over a volcano, and the elements felt this kind of flux, fire would be in the mix, as well. We’re not, thank the gods.” He paused, and then said, “I don’t have to tell you that none of this should leave this garden, do I?”
“It probably doesn’t hurt.” Pause. “Can I tell Severn?”
“You may tell your Corporal, yes. He’s as quiet as the dead. Well, the dead with the decency to stay buried, at any rate.” He looked, now, at his hands. “Ravellon.” He shook his head, and then stared across the table at her.
“Don’t even think it,” she replied.
He did not, however, snap back. Instead, in a much quieter voice, he said, “The