Читать книгу Cast in Flame - Michelle Sagara - Страница 9
ОглавлениеAlthough Bellusdeo had the last word, there were several hundred other words—thankfully none of them in native Dragon—before it. Kaylin thought it unfair when Sanabalis asked for a private word with her before she could leave the office.
The lack of justice didn’t notably ease when he marched her to the West Room in which her magic lessons were taught, and practically shut the door on her shoulder blades—without bothering to touch it. He did, on the other hand, activate the door ward with his own hand.
“What,” he asked, in Elantran, “do you think you’re doing?”
“I thought I was going on patrol in the Elani district.”
His eyes darkened a shade. “If there is ever a time to play games with a Dragon, Private, it is not now. The Emperor is not pleased by the current state of events.”
“Not even I could have missed that.”
He grimaced, and his eyes lightened a shade. “He has granted Bellusdeo his very reluctant permission to leave the Palace. He is placing the fate of the race in your hands.” And clearly, while Sanabalis held Kaylin in some affection, he didn’t consider her the appropriate receptacle for that responsibility.
She stared at him. She remembered to close her mouth after the first few seconds. “The same Emperor who initially thought I should be destroyed because I presented too great a risk?”
“We have not notably changed rulers in the interim.” His eyes gained more gold as he studied her face. “Tell me about this new Barrani. He is a recruit?”
She started to say no, stopped, and shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s a friend of Teela’s. An old friend.”
“He is to my eye one of the Barrani young.”
“She’s known him practically all her life,” she replied, trying to dodge the question he hadn’t yet asked.
“And you trust him?”
Did she? “I don’t know him well enough to trust him.” That was true. “But I trust Teela.”
“Teela is a Barrani High Lord. She owes her loyalty to—”
“She’s a Hawk, Sanabalis.”
Sanabalis was silent for a moment. “Kaylin, you have been the most difficult student I have ever accepted. The rewards are few; the frustration is legion. But you are not—as I’m certain Bellusdeo will tell you—boring. In my fashion, I have grown accustomed to your eccentricities. My opinion carries some weight at court. It will carry exactly none if Bellusdeo comes to harm.” He lifted a hand as Kaylin opened her mouth. “Yes, I am aware that she is not a child. So, too, is the Emperor.
“But you have told anyone who will listen that you are no longer a child, either. The Emperor therefore wishes you to understand what is at risk for you. Bellusdeo has a home in the Palace. She will be as safe there as she would be—”
“In a grave.”
Silence.
Kaylin watched the color of Dragon eyes closely; she’d folded her arms and widened her stance without conscious intent. But if Sanabalis felt insulted, it didn’t anger him; the color remained a constant, pale orange.
“You do not understand the politics of the Dragon Court.”
“Then I recommend better information be taught in racial-integration classes.” She exhaled through clenched teeth and forced herself to relax. “Look, Sanabalis, I don’t understand the problem. The Arkon had no objections. He doesn’t think Bellusdeo can be happy in the Palace. Not right now.”
“The Arkon is being astonishingly sentimental for one of our kind.”
“No, he’s just being perceptive. I don’t know what went down at the end of all the wars. I don’t know what choices the surviving Dragons were given—but I’m guessing that many of the Dragons didn’t survive to make that choice. I don’t know what choice Bellusdeo has been offered—but I’m guessing almost none. She’s the only female Dragon. She’s not being asked to choose between death and eternal servitude.” He started to speak, and she held up one hand. “She understands what’s at stake. She has a sense of responsibility. But she’s not a piece of property. The Emperor already has a hoard.”
“No choice has been demanded of Bellusdeo.”
“That’s not the way Diarmat sees it.”
One pale brow rose into an equally pale hairline.
“...Lord Diarmat.”
“Lord Diarmat is concerned for the rule of law. The Emperor’s law. He is younger than the Arkon, and he is aware that female Dragons are not an entirely different species.”
“They’re not technically a different species at all.”
“Exactly. Lord Diarmat is the only member of the Dragon Court who will risk open hostility to make that point. Bellusdeo is a Dragon, but she is not accorded the responsibilities that exist, for Dragons, in the Empire.”
“Meaning she’s not forced to swear the same oath the rest of you swore.”
“Yes.” Sanabalis fell silent. He did not, however, give Kaylin permission to depart, and she was very much aware, given the turn of the day’s events—or at least the evening’s prior—that permission was required. “She is not happy,” he surprised her by saying.
Kaylin waited.
“It may come as a surprise to you, but her happiness is of some concern to the Emperor; he balances it with a desire for her safety that is second only to his desire for the safety of his hoard. If you will not take the detachment of guards, I will have them dismissed. Go on your patrol. I will arrange a suitable escort for your...apartment hunting.”
“Who would that be?”
He ran his hand over his eyes. “In all likelihood, Private Neya, me. I may attempt to saddle Lord Emmerian with that duty; he has not, to my knowledge, offended Bellusdeo in the last several weeks. Largely,” he added, with a more toothy grin, “because he has avoided her entirely.”
* * *
“Why,” Teela said, in the clipped, cool voice that implied annoyance, “are you sulking?”
“I’m not sulking.” Kaylin did not kick a stone, which took effort.
Mandoran grinned. “You don’t look like you’re sulking to me—but I’m not as conversant with mortal expressions. Why exactly do your eyes stay that fixed color?”
“Human.”
“Doesn’t it make the other mortals wonder if you’re not just animals that talk?”
“Frequently.” She reached out and caught Bellusdeo’s elbow as the Dragon drew breath; it was the kind of slow, heavy breath which sometimes preceded fire. “Either that or it makes them suspicious, because clearly we’re hiding something. Or we’re insane.”
“Well, I won’t argue that,” he replied. He was looking at the buildings that lined the streets, the people that walked them, the stray cats and dogs, and the clouds that scudded overhead, as if everything was both new and fascinating. It probably was. He had spent the past many centuries trapped inside the green, which had a tenuous understanding of physical form. At best. His eyes were a shade of blue-green, and he kept to the side of Teela that happened to be farthest from the Dragon. Kaylin had inserted herself between Teela and Bellusdeo, which meant Mandoran and Bellusdeo were as far apart as they could be while still heading in the same general direction.
They both turned heads, though.
Mandoran wasn’t encumbered by the regulation tabard that Teela wore, and Bellusdeo looked far more like a Lord of the Dragon Court—by dress, at least—than the average pedestrian. Most women who could afford to dress the way she did didn’t walk anywhere—they took carriages, and usually stayed behind their guards and footmen.
Kaylin grimaced. She almost wished Bellusdeo were in one of those carriages, because Elani street was the home of wheedling, enterprising frauds, most of whom could happily accost anyone that appeared to have money.
They were usually better behaved when their victims had Hawks as escorts. Mandoran, on the other hand, didn’t appear to understand that he was a victim. He responded to the offers—in this case, fortune-telling—with unfeigned curiosity and quick delight.
Teela raised a brow. Mandoran stiffened. Neither spoke out loud. They didn’t have to, if they wanted their conversation to be private; they knew each other’s true names. It had been centuries since either had had call to use them, if one ignored the past few weeks.
“Teela,” Mandoran said, “doesn’t want me to have fun here.”
“She’s working. You’ll add to the paperwork if you do.”
“Yes, that seems to be one of her fears. The other is attempting to throw me into...jail if I misbehave?”
“I imagine that would be a lot of fun,” Kaylin replied.
“I’ve offered to visit the High Halls instead of the city streets,” was his cheerful counter. “There, it won’t matter if foolish or stupid people die; it’s considered a form of suicide, and it isn’t Teela’s job to prevent that.”
“Why did we think this was a good idea?” Kaylin asked her fellow Hawk.
“I never thought it was a good idea, if I recall. I merely pointed out that compared to your induction into the Hawks, Mandoran was far less likely to be in danger. Or to indirectly cause it. I was perhaps optimistic about the latter.”
Mandoran snorted. So did Bellusdeo.
“I thought you were here to keep an eye on Annarion.”
At that, Mandoran’s smile dimmed. The color of his eyes shifted, but not into the midnight blue that generally meant upcoming injury or death. He glanced at Teela; Teela was studying the occupants of Elani street as if they were fascinating, dangerous, or both.
“You will have to tell me,” Bellusdeo said to Kaylin, “exactly what did happen on your pilgrimage. It seems you’ve acquired companions.”
“They’re Teela’s companions, not mine. And there are—at the moment—two of them in the city. You’ve met Mandoran. He’s the outgoing, friendly one with the questionable sense of humor.”
“It seems a fairly standard Barrani sense of humor, if less subtle than rumored.”
“He’s young for his age.”
“Not so young,” Mandoran cut in, “that he enjoys being talked about in the third person.”
“And not so mature,” the Dragon countered, “that he doesn’t enjoy talking about other people present in the same way.”
He grinned. His eyes were still a wary blue. “Fair enough.” He spoke Elantran. Kaylin doubted a similar phrase existed in Barrani.
“Where is Annarion anyway?”
“Kitling.”
Mandoran raised a black brow. “He’s visiting his brother.”
Nightshade.
“And no, before you ask, it’s not going well.”
“Why didn’t you go with him?”
“I wasn’t invited. Or rather, I was specifically not invited. Lord Calarnenne was willing to entertain Teela, but for some reason, Teela didn’t choose to accept his invitation.”
“I am uninterested in playing games of power with Nightshade.”
“But Annarion—”
“Is not in danger. Whatever else Nightshade intends in future, the death of his youngest brother is no part of his plan. It is safe for Annarion to rage only in the absence of witnesses. Nightshade didn’t invite me because he was concerned for Annarion’s safety; he wished to confine Annarion’s wrath. I,” she added, with a slender, sharp smile, “did not.” She glanced pointedly at the mark Nightshade had left on Kaylin’s cheek. It was just so much skin to the younger Hawk, but it never failed to annoy Teela.
“Heads up. Margot on the prowl,” Teela added.
Margot was possibly the person on Elani street Kaylin disliked the most, not that there was any shortage of rivals for that position. She was a tall, gorgeous redhead, and she made the color look natural. She was statuesque, her skin was fair, her eyes striking, and she could milk money out of stone by oozing wisdom and charm.
Neither of which Kaylin privately believed she had.
“She won’t come here,” Kaylin replied. “She’s seen me.”
If Kaylin played the least-favorite game, so did Margot. Kaylin was on the top of the Hawk’s list, and possibly near the top three across the board. She still blamed Kaylin for the loss of one of her most lucrative clients, which cost Kaylin no sleep at night, ever.
“Pretty,” Mandoran said, which didn’t help. Margot was not an idiot, whatever else one could call her; she cast an equally appreciative look at Mandoran, but kept her distance. Barrani affairs were seldom safe for mortals, and attempting to bilk a Barrani out of money was a mug’s game; it required stupidity and overbearing ego, and Margot only had one of the two. She pretty much failed to see Kaylin as Kaylin sauntered past.
“She is attractive,” Teela said—which was obviously meant to irritate Kaylin, because there wasn’t any other reason to say it out loud.
Bellusdeo shook her head. “By mortal standards, perhaps, but there’s a brittle edge to the line of her mouth I find unappealing.”
“Guys,” Kaylin snapped. “A little less ogling and a little more patrolling.”
“I’m not patrolling,” Mandoran chuckled.
“Technically, you’re not here.”
He laughed. “You know,” he said, “I think, when you have a place of your own, I’m going to be visiting a lot. You really are much less stodgy than Teela’s become.”
“Teela is no one’s definition of ‘stodgy.’”
“Kaylin will not be living on her own, and I don’t do drop-ins,” Bellusdeo pointed out. Her eyes remained golden. Mandoran’s had edged toward green, but a stubborn streak of blue persisted. If he eventually chose to be comfortable around a Dragon, it wasn’t going to be today.
He shrugged. “From the sound of it, you’re not going to find much of a place of your own anyway.”
“I can find a place,” Kaylin said. “And Bellusdeo, despite appearances, doesn’t require something palatial or even regal, given where we were living before.”
“Oh, it’s not your friend that’s going to be the problem.” He glanced at Teela’s expressionless face, and added, “on the other hand, it could be worse for you. You could be living with Tain.” His grimace looked nothing like a Barrani expression.
Teela cleared her throat. Loudly.
“You’re living with Tain?”
“If you can call it living, yes. For some reason, he doesn’t seem to want me to see much of your fair city. I want,” he added, “to visit the Leontines I hear you have living here. I didn’t even know they could function in cities. But your Sergeant seems fine wearing clothes.”
Bellusdeo glanced at Kaylin. Kaylin turned a tight-lipped stare on Teela, who shrugged. “Surely you expected this?” the Barrani Hawk asked. “You know he hasn’t lived in a mortal city before; he certainly hasn’t lived in this one.”
“The Leontines,” Kaylin told Mandoran, in chilly Barrani, “are not animals. Nor are the humans. The Aerians are not birds. This is a city, not a zoo—and none of its inhabitants are here to be stared at through cage bars.”
“Kitling.”
Mandoran chuckled. “My apologies, Lord Kaylin. I seem to have touched a sensitive spot.”
“You’ve reminded me of all the things I hate about Immortals. I don’t know if you’d consider that a sensitive point or not.” She didn’t much care, either. The small dragon lifted a head and squawked. When Kaylin, still tight-lipped, ignored him, he nipped her ear.
“What?” She turned to glare at him, and he avoided her by leaping off her shoulders to hover in the air. When she still failed to understand whatever it was he was trying to tell her, he added sounds to the flap of wings, and when she failed to get that, he flew, head first, toward a window. A storefront window.
Kaylin ran after him, arms outstretched, while people in the street stopped to stare. She hadn’t been patrolling on Elani for almost two months; the small dragon was still a novelty. Some of the gawkers were no doubt assigning a monetary value to him; she pitied anyone foolish enough to actually try to grab him and carry him off. Actually, scratch that. At the moment, she’d probably enjoy it.
It was only as she reached up for small and squawky that she recognized which window he’d threatened: it was Evanton’s.
The door, habitually shut, now swung open; a wizened, bent old man was standing on the other side of the frame, his frown bracketed by a decade’s worth of lines. “Don’t stand there gawking,” he said, matching tone of voice to expression. “Come in. I put tea on ten minutes ago.”
* * *
Evanton didn’t actually drink tea. He made it for guests. Given his current mood, those guests might as well have been tax collectors. Bellusdeo entered his store, her eyes rounding. If she’d been mortal, Kaylin would have assumed she was surprised at the clutter and the occasional moving cobweb. She wasn’t. She turned to Evanton, in his apron, his jeweler’s glass hanging on the edge of a tarnished silver chain, his white hair in wisps above the crown of his head.
And she bowed.
This seemed to mollify the old man. “You must be Bellusdeo,” he said. “Rise, Lady. While I have a home here, you will always be a welcome, and valued, guest.” His voice was deeper than usual, and to Kaylin’s ear, stronger; it rumbled as if he were almost a Dragon. “I do not know who named you, or from whence they took the name, but it is yours in its entirety. I am honored.”
Kaylin remembered, belatedly, to close her mouth. She stared at Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo’s eyes were a luminous gold, and her lips were turned up in a gentle, almost reverent smile. “You have the advantage of me in many ways,” she said.
“Ah, forgive me.” He turned a far less reverent gaze on Kaylin. “Private, introduce us.”
“Sorry. Bellusdeo, this is a friend of mine. He’s called Evanton, around these parts; if he has a family name, he’s never shared. The young man hiding in the kitchen is Grethan, his apprentice.”
Bellusdeo frowned.
“Kaylin is, like the rest of the inhabitants of Elantra, very informal,” Evanton said. He was, however, smiling in his slightly pained way.
“And you allow this?”
“Lady, she has twice saved my garden. In ignorance, she’s borne the responsibility that has been the entirety of my adult life. She has never demanded reward greater than tea and snacks—and if I am to be honest, she doesn’t so much demand as help herself if I am slow. I am willing to accept informality from her; formality would be so unnatural the awkwardness would likely kill one of us.”
“Kaylin, do you understand who Evanton is?” Bellusdeo demanded.
“Yes. He’s the Keeper.”
“And do you understand what that means?”
“He—he stops the elements from destroying each other. And incidentally the rest of us, although I don’t think they’d notice that as much.” She hesitated and then said, “How did you know what he is if you didn’t recognize who he is?”
Bellusdeo now turned to Teela. “Have you never explained?”
“Teela brought me here, the first time. When I wanted practical enchantments.”
Evanton winced.
“Practical?”
“My daggers don’t make a sound when I draw them.”
The Dragon looked scandalized.
Evanton looked even more pained. “We all, as Kaylin likes to say, need to eat.”
“I should have expected no better from an Empire that so denigrates the Chosen.” Bellusdeo’s eyes were now a deeper than comfortable orange.
“I am content, Lady,” Evanton said, voice grave. “If the current Empire does not treat me with the regard or respect you now offer, it is a far less lonely place than it once was. Grethan,” he added, his voice developing the gruffness and irritability of age. “You are being rude to a guest.”
Grethan’s stalks appeared from the left side of the door frame; they were followed, slowly, by the rest of his face. He didn’t look comfortable. He was Tha’alani by birth, but although he had the characteristic racial stalks protruding from his forehead, they were decorative. He couldn’t join the Tha’alaan. He couldn’t speak to his own people the way they spoke among each other unless one of them touched him and entered his thoughts. The deafness had, in the parlance of the Tha’alani, resulted in insanity. In normal human terms, he’d been angry and isolated, and that anger and isolation had almost caused the death of a Tha’alani child.
A child whose life Grethan had, in the end, saved.
Evanton had taken him in; Kaylin often wondered if what had seemed an act of forgiveness and mercy wasn’t just one long, extended punishment. But the only thing Grethan seemed to fear now was Evanton. He certainly wasn’t afraid of Kaylin, Teela or Bellusdeo.
“Grethan,” Kaylin said. “It’s good to see you’re still alive. Evanton seems to be in a bit of a mood today.”
Bellusdeo’s eyes almost popped out of her head. Kaylin made a mental note not to visit Evanton with Bellusdeo in tow.
The small dragon squawked and landed on Grethan’s shoulder. Grethan looked at least as surprised as Kaylin felt. She recovered first. Grethan seemed entranced.
“So why is Evanton so cranky today?”
“Unfair, Private,” Evanton replied. “Your tea is getting cold. And you’ve failed to introduce me to your other companion—although I suppose you could rightly attribute that lack of manners to Lord Teela.”
“If she were unwise,” Teela replied, her eyes an easy green. “Evanton, this is Mandoran. He has just returned to our lands after a long absence, and everything in them is new, except perhaps rudiments of our language. Mandoran, this is Evanton, the current Keeper.”
“Mandoran?” Evanton frowned. It was a very peculiar frown; his eyes narrowed. In the dim light of the storefront, they seemed momentarily blue, although Evanton’s didn’t, as a general rule, change color. He extended a hand. Mandoran hesitated before extending one of his own. “Come, join us. Grethan, if you can detach yourself from Kaylin’s companion, I would ask that you move refreshments to the Garden.”
Grethan’s eyes widened.
“The kitchen, while suitable for a private of the Hawks, is nowhere near suitable for Lady Bellusdeo.” The official title was Lord, but Kaylin didn’t bother to correct him. “We will therefore repair to the Garden.”
* * *
“What is he up to?” Teela whispered. She was at the back of the line, because Evanton’s rickety halls were at best one person wide. She had maneuvered into the position in front of Kaylin, who had pulled up the back, and had merely stopped walking until everyone else was far enough ahead.
Kaylin shook her head. “I don’t know.” She accepted Teela’s suspicion because she felt some of it herself. “How did Bellusdeo recognize him as the Keeper? Did you, when you first met him?”
Teela exhaled. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Mortals don’t have true names, unless they’ve done something technically questionable.”
“Meaning me.”
“Meaning you, yes. No one is certain what having a name means for a mortal, and given you are—theoretically— mortal, you aren’t considered enough of a threat that an answer must be found. The answer itself would take longer than the rest of your life to obtain.”
“And that’s relevant how?”
“Evanton doesn’t have a name, per se. Not the way Immortals do. But if we meet his eyes for any length of time, we can see four words in their depths. They are names, they are linked to him, and they cannot be used to control him. It is the way the Keepers make themselves known to those who might otherwise intend them harm. If you look, you might be able to make out two of those names—but you might not. I’m not certain Evanton would stand still for long enough.”
“He’s not exactly fast on his feet.”
“No, but in his fashion he knows how to intimidate. I’ve never noticed you engaging in staring contests with him.”
“I’m not the one who does that, Teela.”
Teela chuckled, but her eyes remained an alert blue. “I hate the Garden,” she murmured, squaring her shoulders.
“It can’t be any worse than paperwork.”
* * *
Stepping through the narrow, rickety door at the end of an equally narrow, rickety hall was always a bit of a shock. Evanton’s storefront couldn’t, by any stretch of the truth, be called well lit, and the contrast between his work spaces and the Garden’s brilliant, full-on sunlight made Kaylin’s eyes water.
There was a roof, a domed high ceiling that would have fit right in in the Imperial Palace. There were no obvious glass ceilings or windows, and the roof, unlike the Hawklord’s tower, didn’t appear to open to the sky, so sunlight was in theory impossible. But nothing about this room conformed to what she knew of reality, and Kaylin had long since given up attempting to make sense of it.
She made her way across the flat-stone path laid into grass that would have made pretentious merchants weep with envy, pausing by the still, deep pool that sat, untouched by the breeze that moved almost everything else, in the Garden’s center.
It was the heart of the elemental water, made small and peaceful. Beyond it, burning in a brazier that might have been used for incense, fire. Only in Evanton’s Garden could the elements exist so close to each other in peace.
Beyond them was the small stone hut in which Evanton entertained the few guests he was willing to allow into this space.
“I don’t think it’s because of Bellusdeo that he moved tea,” Kaylin said to Teela, as she made her way to the hut.
“No.”
“I really hope Mandoran doesn’t do anything stupid.”
“He’s not Terrano,” Teela replied. “Terrano was the only one of us likely to throw his life away on a whim.”
He was the only one of the twelve who had not chosen to come home. Somewhere in the spaces that mortals couldn’t occupy, he was racing around the incomprehensible landscape discovering worlds and having fun. Kaylin fervently hoped he stayed there.
“Do you notice anything different about Mandoran? I mean, from before?”
Teela didn’t answer.
* * *
When they reached the hut, the door swung open. Like any building of note in magical space, the interior didn’t fit with the exterior; it was far larger than it had any right to be, for one. The floors were no longer rough stone; they were a gleaming marble, more suitable to a grand foyer than a parlor.
There were chairs of a style Kaylin had never seen in the Garden, and a low flat table that was the rough stone one expected to find outdoors. Tea, in Evanton’s ancient, chipped tea set, was on the table, and steam rose from the spout of the pot. There were four cups, straight, tall cylinders absent handles. Kaylin didn’t understand why cups made for hot liquid were ever without handles, but on the other hand, Bellusdeo was unlikely to burn her hand when picking them up.
The Dragon looked up as Kaylin entered the room; her eyes were golden. Clearly, the Keeper’s abode suited her.
It suited her far more than the Palace.
“The Keeper was just regaling us with details of your first meeting,” she said.
Mandoran, whose back was to the door, swiveled in his chair.
“It wasn’t the first meeting,” Evanton said, gently correcting her. “That was far less remarkable, although I remember thinking her unconscionably young to be keeping company with the Barrani Hawks.”
“No talking about me as if I weren’t in the room,” Kaylin replied, taking the chair closest to Bellusdeo.
“You weren’t in the room at the time.”
“Here, now. Did small and squawky stay with Grethan?” The apprentice was nowhere in sight. Neither was Kaylin’s most constant—and annoying—companion.
“No. He’s in the fireplace.” Bellusdeo nodded toward the fire in question. It was set into the wall, but reminded Kaylin—once again—of the Palace. Even the pokers looked like they were made of brass. And shiny.
“There’s a fire in the fireplace,” Kaylin quite reasonably pointed out.
“He doesn’t take up a lot of room, and it’s not like fire burns him. You can go and poke the fire if you want—he’s there.” Bellusdeo’s expression made clear that if Dragons of any size didn’t burn, mortals of any size did.
“I hope he puts himself out before he lands on my shoulders again.” Kaylin turned back to her tea.
Squawk.
Mandoran grinned. “I have to say, I’ve never met a mortal a tenth as interesting as you are. I can almost understand why Teela is so attached to you.”
“Teela,” Teela said, “dislikes being spoken of in the third person even more than Private Neya. She is also far more effective at discouragement.”
Mandoran laughed. “So she is. I don’t know where you found the private, but I’d hold on to her, if I were you. Honestly, I wish everyone had descended on this strange, smelly, crowded place. Sedarias is beside herself with envy at where I am. In the Keeper’s Garden!”
“It’s not that exciting,” Evanton said, his usual crankiness asserting itself.
“It is—she’s the only one of us who’d met the Keeper. Not you,” Mandoran added, as if that were necessary. “And Teela doesn’t count. Can I talk to the elements?”
“Perhaps another day,” Teela said, before Evanton could reply.
“But I hear the water,” Mandoran said, his eyes green, his expression both familiar and strange. It took Kaylin a few minutes to understand why: it was very similar to the hesitant joy that the foundlings sometimes showed. She’d never seen anything remotely similar on a Barrani face before.
Evanton rose. “With your permission, Lord Teela, I believe the water wishes to converse with Mandoran. I will lead him there, and return.”
Mandoran was out of his chair before Evanton had finished speaking.
