LITMIR.BIZ

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of ownership by using a lesser blade. What does she use, anyway?”

      “Mostly hands or feet, but sometimes a great big stick.”

      He nodded.

      Severn, who was the model of studied patience, finally spoke, scattering the pleasant gossip to the winds that Evanton had mentioned. “Why are you showing us this?”

      “A very good question. I’m surprised Kaylin didn’t ask it,” he added, frowning at her, although he spoke to Severn. “She always asks too many questions—they try what little patience I’ve managed to preserve.” But he said it without rancor. “This is not unlike the High Halls of the Barrani—and if I’m not mistaken, Corporal Handred, you are also entitled to be called Lord while you are in the High Halls.”

      Severn nodded.

      “This place is, however, older, I think, than the Halls, and one of the few such ancient places within the city that are not governed by either Barrani or the Dragon Emperor himself.

      “Although when I was called to answer for my stewardship of this place, I will say the Dragon Emperor was a tad … testy. I’d advise you to stay on his good side when you do meet him.”

      “You mean the side without the teeth, right?” Kaylin asked.

      Evanton chuckled. “That side, yes, although the tail can be quite deadly.”

      She didn’t ask him how he knew this. His words had caught up with her thoughts. “What do you mean when I meet him?”

      His frown was momentary. “Never mind, girl. All in good—or bad—time. He is watching you, but even his reach is not so long that he can see you here. He is almost certainly aware that you are here, however.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “He has my shop watched.”

      “Oh.” She paused, and took a step forward into a room that was, in her eyes, almost devoid of any trace of human interference. But … it belonged to Evanton, and because it did, she could see odd things that lay on stone pedestals, on stone shelves, and in alcoves that lined the nearest walls. Things that held candles—candelabras?—that were lined up in perfect precision, unlit and therefore unblemished. There were books, boxes that looked as if they’d been left out in the rain—and the sun and the snow for good measure—and small, golden tablets that looked as if they had, conversely, barely been touched by eyes. Still, it was the candles that caught her attention.

      “Are they ever lit?”

      “Never,” Evanton replied. “And if they are to be lit, let it be during someone else’s watch.”

      She nodded and kept walking, and after a while, she said, “This is circular, this room?”

      “A large circle, but yes.” Evanton’s eyes were gleaming and dark as he answered. His nod was more a nod of approval than Kaylin had ever seen from him. She took encouragement from it, and continued to watch the room with the eyes—the trained eyes—of a hawk.

      Saw a small pond, saw a fire burning in a brazier; felt the wind’s voice above her head and saw the leaves turn at its passing. Saw, in the distance, a rock garden in which no water trickled.

      She said, “Elemental.”

      And Evanton nodded again.

      “Severn?”

      “I concur. But it is unusual.”

      “And the books, Evanton?”

      “Good girl,” he said softly. “Those, do not touch. You may approach them, but do not touch them.”

      “I doubt I’d be able to read them.”

      “It is not in the reading that they present the greatest threat, and Kaylin, if you spoke no words at all, if you were entirely deprived of language, these books would still speak to you.”

      “Magic,” she said with disdain.

      “Indeed, and older magic than the magic that is the current fashion. Fashion,” he added, “may be frowned on by the old, but I believe that the trend is not a bad one.”

      She half closed her eyes. Listened to the voice of the wind as it rustled through slender branches; golden leaves, white leaves and a pale, pale bloodred, all turned as it passed. Heard, for a moment, a name that was not quite hers as she looked up, to feel its touch across her cheeks.

      The mark of Nightshade began to tingle. It was not entirely comfortable. Without thinking, she lifted a hand to her face to touch the mark.

      “The mark you bear affords you some protection. He must value you, Kaylin,” Evanton said. He was closer than she realized; she should have heard his shuffling step, but she had heard only the wind. And felt, for a moment, the glimmering dream of flight.

      His voice dispelled the wind’s, sent it scattering, left her bound—as she would always be bound—to ground. And because he simply waited, she began to walk again.

      To the pond, where small shelves and altars sat across moss beds. Books lay there, and again, candles, unlit, by the dozen. There were small boxes, and a mirror—the first she’d seen since she’d entered this room.

      “The mirror—”

      “Do not touch it.”

      “Wasn’t going to,” she said, although her hand stopped in midair. “But does it work?”

      “Work?”

      “Is it functional? If I wanted to send a message, could I?”

      “Not,” he replied, “to anyone you would care to speak to.” It was an evasion. She accepted it. At the moment, the investigation—such as it was, since he hadn’t actually told them anything useful—was not about mirrors or messages, but it was the first truly modern thing she’d encountered.

      Yet even as she thought it, she looked at the mirror, and thought again. Its surface was tarnished and cloudy, and its frame, gold and silver, poorly tended. Unlike the rest of the small, jeweled boxes, the reliquaries—she recognized them for that now—this had been left alone.

      “Do they all have mirrors?”

      “All?”

      “The elemental gardens. There should be four—the fire in the brazier, the water in this small pond, the rocks just beyond those silver trees. I can’t see anything for air—”

      “It is very, very hard to build a garden to air,” he replied. “But it is here, and perhaps it is the freest of the elements because it can travel so readily. And the answer is no. None of them do.”

      “But this one—”

      “Was brought here. It does not belong in this room.”

      “But you haven’t moved it.”

      “No,” he replied. “And until the Hawks deem it wise, I will not return it to its place. But do not touch it. The hand that held it last left some impression, but it will not, I think, be the equal of yours.”

      “You think of everything.”

      “I? Hardly. Had I, you would not be here now.”

      “Good point. Maybe.” It was hard to leave the mirror, but she did, because the surface of the pond was everything the surface of the mirror was not: clean, smooth, reflective. The breeze that blew above did not touch it at all; she wondered if a pebble would ripple its surface.

      “No,” Evanton replied, as if he were reading her mind—which she’d gotten used to in the last few weeks, but still didn’t much care for. “It would not. The earth and the water barely meet here. The pond is not wide,” he added, “but it runs very, very deep.”

      She nodded. “These footprints,” she said, although she had barely grazed ground with her eyes,

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