Michelle Sagara - Cast in Chaos

It was Severn who answered. “We aren’t entirely certain of that.”

“How uncertain are you, and why?”

“You are no doubt aware that Sergeant Mallory made a few changes to the official office out of which the Hawks operate. One of those changes was—”

“The window, yes. I can tell you his requisition raised a few eyebrows in the Order.”

“The window is perhaps not the most popular addition to the office. It is, however, impervious to most casual attempts to harm it.”

“Go on.”

“Someone attempted to dampen or neutralize the magic on the window—or so we believed.”

“Tampering with official property?”

“As I said, that was our belief at the time. Given the nature of the enchantment—”

“It would be entirely believable. What happened?”

“The window now greets visitors—and staff—by name. Among other things. Its lectures have become more directed.”

“The names could possibly have been carried over from any connection with Records, and I assume, given the requisition request, that connection would be mandatory.”

“That was the theory. The window began, however, to greet visitors by name, as well, and some of those visitors don’t exist in our Records. None of the Hawks are mages. We naturally assumed, given the nature of the original enchantment, that the attempt to disenchant the window had simply skewed it.”

Sanabalis raised a hand, not to silence Severn, but to touch the window that separated them from high, open sky. Kaylin’s hair began to stand on end.

The window darkened instantly, shutting out both sunlight and the sight of the Halls of Law. The bars that separated the panes seemed to melt into the surface of what had once been glass until the entire bay looked like a smooth, featureless trifold wall.

“Records,” Sanabalis said, and the blackness rippled at the force of the single word. So, Kaylin swore, did the ground. He was using his dragon voice. The mirror—such as it was—rippled again, and this time light coalesced in streaks of horizontal lines. Sanabalis inhaled. Kaylin lifted her hands to cover her ears. Severn caught them both in his and pulled them down as the dragon spit out a phrase that Kaylin could literally feel pass through her.

“When you finally get called to Court,” Severn told her, when it was silent again, “you won’t be able to do that. Not more than once.”

“They’ll…” She grimaced. “I just assumed they’d be speaking High Barrani.” She swallowed, nodded, and wondered how bad a Court meeting would be if she couldn’t actually hear anything after the first few sentences.

Severn released her hands; they both turned to face the image that Sanabalis had called so uncomfortably into being. It was, to Kaylin’s surprise, a map. “We,” the Dragon Lord said, without looking away from the lines that now stretched, in different shades, and in different widths, across the entire surface area, “are here.” A building seemed to dredge itself out of the network of lines, assuming solid shape and texture; it was, however, small.

“The Halls, as you can see, are here.” A miniature version of the Halls also seemed to grow out of the surface of the map.

“The Keeper’s responsibility is here.” He gestured, and a third building rose out of the map. Kaylin frowned as it did. She walked past Evanton’s shop at least a dozen times a day when she was sent to Elani on patrol. That shop and the one that now emerged at Sanabalis’s unspoken command had nothing in common.

“Private, is there some difficulty?”

She turned to Severn. “Severn, does that look like Evanton’s place to you?”

“No.”

Sanabalis frowned. “It is a representation of—” The frown deepened, cutting off the rest of his words. His eyes narrowed and he leaned toward the emerging building. He needn’t have bothered; the building that had started out in miniature began to expand, uprooting the lines that were meant to represent streets or rivers as if they were dusty webs.

The dragon spoke, loudly, at the image. It froze in place.

“It appears,” he said softly—or at least softly compared to his previous words—“that we have a serious problem.”

When a Dragon of Sanabalis’s power uses the word problem in that tone of voice, you start to look for two things: a good weapon, and a place to hide, because, when it comes right down to it, the weapon’s going to be useless. Kaylin, aware of this, did neither.

“Problem?” she said, staring at the malformed map. Sanabalis didn’t appear to have heard her. Clearing her throat, she said, “What are the distances from the Palace to the Halls, the Halls to Elani and the Palace to Elani?”

“I would prefer, at this point, not to ask,” he replied. “Suffice it to say it is not an insignificant distance. The full length of Elani itself would not have been an insignificant distance, given the perturbations you’ve described. I am now assuming that either Margot or the young Alyssa Larienne drew upon the waiting potential and used it. That they did so entirely without intent…

“Come,” he told them both, and turned away from the mirror.

“Where are we going?”

“You are going to the courtyard. I will meet you there with an Imperial Carriage.”

“Why?”

“I would prefer not to use magic at this point. I would also prefer to have no one else use it. Word of this zone, if we can even deduce its boundaries, will spread. We cannot afford to have it touched or used by the wrong people.”

Kaylin stilled. “People can deliberately use it?”

“Not without effort, and not without unpredictable results. Mages are likely to find their spells much more powerful in that zone, and if they are not prepared for it and they are using the wrong spells, it could prove fatal. It is not, however, for the mages that I am concerned.”

“This has happened before,” she said, voice flat.

“Yes, of course it has. Magic is not easily caged or defined. It has not, however, happened over an area this large in any recent history.”

“How recent is recent?”

“The existence of our current Empire.”

Immortals.

If Kaylin had any curiosity about where Sanabalis had gone in the brief interval before he met them in the courtyard, it was satisfied before they left the Palace: she could hear the thunderous clap of syllables that was the equivalent of dragon shouting. The Imperial guards, to give them their due, didn’t even blink as she and Severn walked past.

But if Dragons were immortal, an emergency was still an emergency; they waited for maybe fifteen minutes in total before Sanabalis, looking composed and grim, met them. “Do not,” he said, although Kaylin hadn’t even opened her mouth, “ask.” He glared at the carriage door, and it opened, although admittedly it opened at the hands of footmen.

The ride was grim, silent, and fast. Imperial Carriages were built for as much comfort as a carriage allowed, and people got out of its way. Sanabalis had the door open when it hit the Halls’ yard; the Halls, unlike the Palace, expected people to more or less do things for themselves. He waited until the precise moment someone else had a hand on the horse’s jesses, and then jumped down. Kaylin and Severn did the same, following him as quickly as they could without breaking into a run.

Sanabalis wasn’t running, of course.

There was what wouldn’t pass for a cursory inspection at the front doors; Sanabalis gave his name, but the formality of crossed polearms failed to happen because Sanabalis also didn’t stop moving. They didn’t have time to send a runner ahead, at least not on foot, but there were Aerians practicing maneuvers in the Aerie that opened up just behind the front doors, and Kaylin noticed the way at least one shadow dropped out of formation.