Michelle Sagara - Cast in Chaos

He had worked on that odd, messy frame, in which daytime colors overlapped in startling contrast with night colors; he had taken care to paint stars and a haze of mist that twisted, like an incongruously delicate veil, across a foreign sky. He had taken care to paint its height, and seeing that, she almost flinched; it was as tall as some of the unpainted buildings, and if it was in any perspective at all, it swallowed the road.

But at its center was white space. He had done no sketching there.

Everly, oblivious to his audience, continued to work. He was using the darker spectrum of his palette, applying paint here and there as carelessly as Kaylin applied words, but achieving the effortless effect of a slowly coalescing reality that Kaylin’s careless words couldn’t.

“Given the speed at which he’s painted this,” Kaylin said quietly, “we’ll have some idea of what’s going to emerge tomorrow. Or later tonight.”

“It is not…small, if the area he’s left is indeed something that emerges and not further scenery.”

“It’s not really the center we need, anyway.”

Sanabalis raised a brow.

She pointed to the buildings that lined either side of the street in their frustrating lack of detail. “We need to know where—roughly—this vision takes place.”

“It is not a concrete representation of place, Private,” Master Sabrai said curtly. “That is not the way Oracles work.”

“I’ve been the subject of one of his Oracles,” she replied, just as curtly. “And I think the clues will be there if we can read ’em. We need them.”

Sanabalis cleared his throat. Loudly. The sound was enough to cause Everly to lift his head for a few seconds as if he were testing the air. Speech, however, failed to hold his attention, and he went back to his quick, light movements. “Master Sabrai is correct in this, Private. What he paints is not predictive in the sense you hope for. You cannot direct him. What he finishes, he finishes.”

But she looked at the space that he had not yet started to touch, and she felt cold, although she was standing in sunlight. “Tonight,” she told Sanabalis quietly.

“I concur. I do not think, however, that it will be necessary to stand here for the entire eight hours while he paints. We now have other things to examine.” He turned to Master Sabrai. “If you will deliver the transcripts of the dreams that interrupted the Halls last eve, we will begin to attempt to make some over-arching sense of the impending difficulty. Thank you,” he added, in a more clipped tone.

Master Sabrai shook his head as if to clear it. “As you say, Lord Sanabalis. If you will return to my office, I will give you what I’ve managed to transcribe.”

“I am willing to deal with Sigrenne’s less than perfect penmanship.”

Not reminding Sanabalis of this definitive statement was difficult, because it would sound smug; Sigrenne’s hand was neither neat nor precise, and Sanabalis had clearly not spent as much time deciphering human scribbles as Kaylin had. Most of the Hawks were not in the running for world’s best penman.

Sanabalis sat in the carriage opposite Kaylin; smoke drifted from his nostrils and the corner of his lips, and his eyes were a decided shade of orange. Given the way he glared at the pile of papers—and the paper was by no means uniform in size or shape, which made it ungainly—Kaylin was half-surprised they hadn’t gone up in that smoke.

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.”