LITMIR.BIZ

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took her to Sanabalis’s personal meeting room. It wasn’t an office; there was no sign of a desk, or anything that looked remotely business-like—besides the Dragon Lord himself—in the room. And it had windows that did not, in fact, give out lectures on decorum, dress, and the use of racially correct language to random passersby. The windows here, on the other hand, were impressive, beveled glass that looked out on one of the best views of the Halls of Law in the city.

      “If this,” he told Kaylin, indicating one of the many chairs positioned in front of the one he occupied, “is about your class schedule, I will be tempted to reduce you to ash on the spot.” As his eyes were the familiar gold that Marcus’s hadn’t been since she’d returned to the office, she assumed this was what passed for Dragon humor, and she took a chair.

      Severn did likewise.

      “It’s not about the class schedule, although if you want my opinion—”

      Sanabalis raised a pale, finely veined hand. It looked like an older man’s hand, but it could, in a pinch, probably drive a dent into solid rock. Dragons could look like aged wise men, but it was only ever cosmetic. They were immortal, like the Barrani. They lacked Barrani magnetism, and their unearthly beauty and grace, but Kaylin assumed that was because they didn’t actually care what the Barrani or the merely mortal thought of them. At all.

      “I believe, given previous exposure to your opinions, I can derive it from first principles.”

      Severn coughed. Kaylin glared at the side of his face, because for Severn, this was laughter that he’d only barely managed to contain. “There was an incident in Elani street today.”

      So much for gold. His eyes started the shade-shift into bronze the minute she mentioned the street. “I take it,” she added, “you heard.”

      “We were informed—immediately—by Lord Grammayre, yes. I am not at liberty to discuss it at the moment. I am barely at liberty to have this meeting,” he added. “But in general, you come to the Palace with information that is relevant, and often urgent. Do not, however, waste my time.”

      “I didn’t cause the incident. I caused outrage because I didn’t immediately obey the orders of a pissed-off noble.”

      “Understood. You have information on what did cause the incident?”

      “Not directly.”

      He snorted. Small plumes of smoke left his nostrils, which was unusual. “Evanton sent me,” she said quickly.

      “The Keeper sent you?”

      She nodded. “He started to talk about magical potential, and the sudden surge he felt in Elani.”

      Sanabalis was silent. It wasn’t a good silence.

      “He—the incident with Alyssa Larienne—he thought the magical potential shift was responsible for it somehow.”

      “Let me reverse my earlier position,” he said quietly. “What were the other incidents?”

      She told him.

      His eyes were now the color of new copper. “And these incidents,” he finally said, rising and turning his face toward the window. “Did they all occur within roughly the same area?”

      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.”

      CHAPTER 3

      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,

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