Cast in Chaos. Michelle Sagara

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      Evanton was wearing his usual apron, and it was decorated with the usual pins and escapee threads of the variety of materials with which he worked. But his eyes were, like the lights in the room, a little too bright. He glanced at her, his hands pulling thread through a thick, dark fabric that lay in a drape across his spindly lap. “I was wondering,” he said, although it was somewhat muffled, given the pins between his lips, “when you would show up.”

      “The Garden—”

      “Oh, the Garden’s fine. Whatever you did in the fiefs a couple of weeks ago was enough to calm it. It looks normal. No, the Garden is not your problem.” He removed the pins and stuck them carefully into one of a half-dozen oddly shaped pincushions by his left arm. “I’ve almost finished with your cloak,” he added, “if you want to try it on.”

      She had the grace to redden. “Not now,” she told him. “I’m on duty.”

      He raised a brow. “Have you two been on patrol all morning?”

      Kaylin nodded.

      “Notice anything unusual?”

      She nodded again, but this time more slowly. Note to self: visit Evanton’s first, next time you’re in Elani. “What is it, Evanton? We’re just about to make a sweep of the street to see if anything else unusual turns up.”

      “I hope you’ve got a lot of time,” the old man replied. He rose and folded the cloth in his lap into a careful bundle. “I’d offer you tea, but the boy’s forgotten to fill the bucket.”

      “I can fill it—”

      “No. That won’t be necessary.”

      She frowned.

      “It’s not only in the rest of the street that the unusual is occurring,” he told her. “This morning, when he came in with the water, the water started to speak to him.”

      “Evanton—”

      “Yes. He was born deaf, by the standards of the Tha’alani. He has always been mind deaf, but he is still Tha’alani by birth. In the Elemental Garden, he can hear the water’s voice, and through it, some echo of the voice of his people. This is the first time it’s happened outside of the Garden, and the water was in buckets. It is not, sadly, still in those buckets. I can’t get him to drink a glass of water at the moment. He sits and stares at it instead.” He frowned. “I had heard rumors that you were studying magic with Lord Sanabalis.”

      “From who?”

      “Private, please. I gather from your sour expression that the rumors are true. You might wish to speak with Lord Sanabalis about the events on Elani at your earliest convenience. If we are lucky, he will be unaware of the difficulties you might encounter.”

      “And if we’re not?”

      “He will already know, and it will mean that the difficulties are present across a much wider area of the city.”

      “What will it mean to him?”

      “What it should mean to you, if you’ve been studying for any length of time,” was the curt reply. But Evanton did relent. “There has been a significant and sudden shift in the magical potential of an area that is at least as broad as Elani.”

      Kaylin froze. “Severn, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

      “I’m thinking that our sample size—of three—is more than enough for the day. We should return to the office immediately.”

      Evanton frowned, although with his face it was sometimes difficult to tell. “Something unusual happened outside of the confines of this particular neighborhood.”

      “Yes. An enchantment laid against some of the windows in the Halls of Law has developed a more commanding and distinct personality than it possessed a few days ago.”

      Evanton closed his eyes. “Go, Private, Corporal. Speak with the Hawklord now.”

      Speaking with the Hawklord was not at the top of Kaylin’s list of things to do before the end of her shift. Or at all. He was—they all were—aware of the shortcomings in an education that didn’t include the rich and the powerful on this side of the Ablayne. For one, power in the fiefs usually meant brute force; manners were what you developed when you wanted to avoid pissing off the brute force in question. Marcus had once told her that manners in the rest of Elantra were exactly the same thing, but Kaylin knew they weren’t. In the fiefs, the best manners were often either silence or total invisibility.

      Here, you were actually expected to talk and interact. Without obvious groveling or fawning, and without obvious fear.

      Severn caught her hand.

      “What?”

      “Stop rubbing your arm like that. You’ll take your skin off.”

      “Like that would be a bad thing.” But she did stop. “I should have known,” she added. “You suspected?”

      “I wondered.”

      The Halls loomed in a distance that was growing shorter as they walked; they weren’t patrolling, so there was no need for a leisurely pace. They also weren’t running because running Hawks made people nervous.

      Tanner took one look at her face and stepped to one side. “Trouble?” he asked them both.

      “Possible trouble,” Kaylin replied. They breezed through the Aerie and the halls that led to the office that was Kaylin’s second home. Marcus was at his desk, and he roared when he caught sight of them. Kaylin cringed.

      “Here. Now.”

      Only a suicidal idiot would have ignored that tone of voice. Or the claws that were adding new runnels to scant clear desk surface. Both she and Severn made their way to the safe side of his desk—the one he wasn’t on. Kaylin lifted her chin, exposing her throat. Marcus actually glowered at it as if he was considering his options; his eyes were a very deep orange, and about as far from his usual golden color as they could get when death wasn’t involved.

      “In your rounds in Elani today did you happen to encounter anyone significant?” he growled, his voice on the lower end of the Leontine scale. The office had fallen—mostly—silent; total silence would probably occur only in the event of the deaths of everyone in it.

      “Alyssa Larienne.”

      “Lady Alyssa Larienne. She is the daughter of one of the oldest—and wealthiest—human families in Elantra. Her father is a member of significance in the human Caste Court. Her mother is the daughter of the castelord. If you wanted to make my life more difficult when dealing with the human Caste Court, you couldn’t have chosen a better person to offend.”

      Well, there is her father. This time, Kaylin kept her mouth shut.

      “I expect there to be a good explanation for this.”

      “I wasn’t the one who actually offended her, if that helps.”

      He snarled, which meant it didn’t. “What happened?”

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