Michelle Sagara - Cast in Chaos

“It’s not optional,” Kaylin said glumly. “And the worst part is, if I pass, I probably get to do something big. Like meet the Emperor.”

“I’d like to be able to say that won’t kill you.”

“You couldn’t, with a straight face.”

He shrugged. “When do you start?”

“Two days. I meet Sanabalis—Lord Sanabalis—for Magical Studies—”

“Magical Studies? Does it actually say that?”

“Those are the exact words. Don’t look at me, I didn’t write it—in the afternoon tomorrow.” She dropped the schedule into her locker with as much care as she generally dropped dirty towels.

Elani street was not a hub of activity in the morning. It wasn’t exactly deserted, but it was quiet, and the usual consumers of love potions and extracts to combat baldness, impotence, and unwanted weight were lingering on the other side of storefronts. Remembering her mood the last time she’d walked this beat, Kaylin took care not to knock over offending sandwich boards. On the other hand, she also took the same care not to read them.

“Kaylin?”

“Hmm?” She was looking at the cross section of charms in a small case in one window—Mortimer’s Magnificent Magic—and glanced at her partner’s reflection in the glass.

“You’re rubbing your arms.”

She looked down and realized he was right. “They’re sort of itchy,” she said.

He raised one brow. “Sort of itchy?”

The marks that adorned most of the insides of her arms were, like the ones that covered her inner thighs and half of her back, weather vanes for magic. Kaylin hesitated. “It doesn’t feel the way it normally does when there’s strong magic. It’s—they’re just sort of itchy.”

“And they’ve never been like that before.”

She frowned. She’d had fleas once, while cat-sitting for an elderly neighbor. The itch wasn’t quite the same, but it was similar.

She started to tell him as much, and was interrupted midsentence by someone screaming.

It was, as screams went, a joyful, ecstatic sound, which meant their hands fell to their clubs without drawing them. But they—like every other busybody suddenly crowding the streets—turned at the sound of the voice. It was distinctly male, and probably a lot higher than it normally was. Bouncing a glance between each other, they shrugged and headed toward the noise.

The scream slowly gathered enough coherence to form words, and the words, to Kaylin’s surprise, had something to do with hair. And having hair. When they reached the small wagon set up on the street—and Kaylin made a small note to check for permits, as that was one of the Dragon Emperor’s innovations on tax collection—the crowds had formed a thin wall.

The people who lived above the various shops in Elani street had learned, with time and experience, to be enormously cynical. Exposure to every promise of love, hair, or sexual prowess known to man—or woman, for that matter—tended to have that effect, as did the more esoteric promise to tease out the truth about the future and your destined greatness in it. They had pretty much heard—and seen—it all.

And given the charlatans who masqueraded as merchants on much of the street, both the permanent residents and the officers of the Law who patrolled it knew that it wasn’t beyond them to hire an actor to suddenly be miraculously cured of baldness, impotence, or blindness.

Kaylin assumed that the man who was almost crying in joy was one of these actors. But if he was, he was damn good. She started to ask him his name, stopped as he almost hugged her, and then turned to glance at the merchant whose wagon this technically was.

He looked…slack-jawed and surprised. He didn’t even bother to school his expression, which clearly meant he was new to this. Not new to fleecing people, she thought sourly, just new to success. When he took a look at the Hawk that sat dead center on her tabard, he straightened up, and the slack lines of his face tightened into something that might have looked like a grin—on a corpse.

“Officer,” he said, in that loud, booming voice that demanded attention. Or witnesses. “How can I help you on this fine morning?” He had to speak loudly, because the man was continuing his loud, joyful exclamations.

“I’d like to see your permits,” Kaylin replied. She spoke clearly and calmly, but her voice traveled about as far as it would have had she shouted. It was one of the more useful things she’d learned in the Halls of Law. She held out one hand.

“But that’s—that’s outrageous!”

“Take it up with the Emperor,” Kaylin replied, although she did secretly have some sympathy for the man. “Or the merchants’ guild, as they supported it.”

“I am a member in good standing of the guild, and I can assure you—”

She lifted a hand. “It’s not technically illegal for you to claim to be a member in good standing of a guild,” she told him, keeping her voice level, but lowering it slightly. “But if you’re new here, it’s really, really stupid to claim to be a member of the merchants’ guild if you’re not.” Glancing at his wagon, which looked well serviced but definitely aged, she shrugged.

“I am not new to the city,” the man replied. “But I’ve been traveling to far lands in order to bring the citizens of Elantra the finest, the most rare, of mystical unguents and—”

“And you still need a permit to sell them here, or in any of the market streets or their boundaries.” She turned. Lifting her voice, she said, “Okay, people, it’s time to pack it in. Mr.—”

“Stravaganza.”

The things people expected her to be able to repeat with a straight damn face. Kaylin stopped herself from either laughing or snorting. “Mr. Stravaganza is new enough to the City that he’s failed to acquire the proper permits for peddling his wares in the streets. In order to avoid the very heavy fines associated with the lack of permit, he is now closed for business until he makes the journey to the Imperial Tax Offices to acquire said permit.”

Severn, on the other hand, was looking at the bottle he’d casually picked up from the makeshift display. It was small, long, and stoppered. The merchant started to speak, and then stopped the words from falling out of his mouth. “Please, Officer,” he said to Severn. “My gift to a man who defends our city.” He even managed to say this with a more or less straight face.

Severn nodded and carefully pocketed the bottle. As he already had a headful of hair, Kaylin waited while the merchant packed up and started moving down the street. Then she looked at her partner. “What gives?” she said, gesturing toward his pocket.

“I don’t know,” was the unusually serious reply. “But that man wasn’t acting. I’d be willing to bet that he actually thinks the fact that he now has hair is due to the contents of this bottle.”

“You can’t believe that,” she said, voice flat.

Severn shrugged. “Let’s just make sure Mr. Stravaganza crosses the border of our jurisdiction. When he’s S.E.P., we can continue our rounds.”

The wagon made it past the borders and into the realm of Somebody Else’s Problem without further incident. Kaylin and Severn did not, however, make it to the end of their shift in the same way. They corrected their loose pattern of patrol once they returned to the street; as the day had progressed, Elani had become more crowded. This was normal.

Some of the later arrivals were very richly clothed, and came in fine carriages, disembarking with the help of their men; some wore clothing that had been too small a year ago, with patches at elbows and threads of different colors around cuffs and shoulders.

All of them, rich, poor, and shades in between, sought the same things. At a distance, Kaylin saw one carriage stop before the doors of Margot. Margot, with her flame-red hair, her regal and impressive presence, and her damn charisma. Margot’s storefront was, like the woman whose name was plastered in gold leaf across the windows, dramatic and even—Kaylin admitted grudgingly—attractive. It implied wealth, power, and a certain spare style.