CHAPTER ONE

“It’s eight o’clock in the morning.  Please remember to fill out your reports and hand in your paper­work.”  Had the cheerful and musical voice belonged to a person who could be easily stran­gled, it would have stopped in mid-sentence.

Sadly, it was the melo­dious voice of the street­side window which inter­rupted the bustling and vastly less perky office in which the branch of Law known as the Hawks was based.  That window, which had been installed complete with a magical, time-telling voice in some misguided attempt at humor, had been adjusted in the past couple of weeks by Acting Sergeant Mallory, and no one who had to work where they could hear it – and were prevented by office regu­la­tions from destroying it – consid­ered the adjust­ments to be an improvement.

Sergeant Marcus Kassan, the large and currently bristling Leon­tine behind the central desk in the Hawk’s Office raised his fist and flexed his fingers.  Long claws, gleaming in the sun’s light, appeared from beneath his golden fur.  He had not yet shat­tered the window – and given it was installed with the guid­ance of Impe­rial Mages, that would have been damn hard – but he looked like he was on the edge of finally doing it in.  The betting pool had not yet been won, but at least three people were out money, Private Kaylin Neya being one.  The office had discov­ered, however, that the windows couldn’t be scratched, and Kaylin had argued vocif­er­ously that this should have counted as a victory condi­tion.  She’d lost.

Then again, Leon­tines were gener­ally all about the clawing, biting, rending, and ripping out of throats; they weren’t as good with smashing things.

Kaylin’s personal favorite was the new end-of-day message, wherein the cheerful voice of the window told the departing staff that they were to be in the office at 7:00 a.m., and they were to be shaved, where shaving was appro­priate, and other­wise clean.  She was less keen on the last bit, in which the Hawks were reminded to check the duty roster for last minute adjustments.

“Why doesn’t he just have the mages shut it down?”  she asked Caitlin, as Marcus drove new furrows into his desk.

“I think he considers it a reminder of the differ­ences between Sergeant Mallory’s tempo­rary tenure and his more perma­nent record,” Caitlin replied.  The reply, like the ques­tion that engen­dered it, was very, very quiet.  This didn’t guar­antee that it couldn’t be over­heard, but unless Marcus had it in for you, he was capable of a bit of selec­tive deaf­ness.  If he hadn’t been, his office would be half-manned for at least an entire duty cycle, and the half that was left alive would be too busy cleaning up to cause trouble.

“Neya!”  Given Marcus’s current mood, the fact that there had been no blood­shed was pushing the good will of what­ever gods watched over under­slept and under­paid police.  “You’re due out on beat in five minutes.  Stop both­ering Caitlin and hit the street.”

#

Kaylin’s beat was Elani Street and its surround­ings, and her partner was – as it so frequently was, these days – Corporal Severn Handred.  He was already kitted out and ready to go when she careened down the hall to the locker room.  He raised an eyebrow, one bisected by a slender scar, while he watched her use the wall as a brake.

“What?  I’m not late yet.”

“Not yet.  It’s hard to be late when the window is nagging.”

She grimaced.  “Marcus took his claws to it yesterday.”

“Don’t start.”

“I think that should count.”

“Is the window still in one piece?  Then it doesn’t count.”  Severn was at the top of the betting pool at the moment, and looked to be secure in his posi­tion, but they’d both grown up on some pretty mean streets, and “secure” meant some­thing different to them.

This was prob­ably why they got along so well with the Barrani Hawks.  The Barrani were noted for their love of the polit­ical.  Polit­ical, in the context of their race, usually involved assas­si­na­tion, both liter­ally and figu­ra­tively, and smallish wars.  They under­stood that anything they owned had to be held against all comers.  Those who held less were perfectly willing to test the defi­n­i­tion of “secure”, often to the breaking point.

Of course, unless one of those assas­si­na­tion attempts was lucky, the Barrani weren’t about to expire of old age; they didn’t.  Age, that is.  They had long memo­ries, and they could easily hold a grudge for longer than Kaylin’s whole life; at least two of them did.  On the other hand, they made immor­tality look like one long gripe-fest, admit­tedly with killer clothing, so it was hard to begrudge them their eter­nity of suffering.  Or of making everyone else they knew suffer.  Kaylin, as a human, would even­tu­ally clock out, which would in theory earn her some peace.

She dressed quickly, straight­ening out the cloth and under-padding that had managed to crumple in the wrong places the way it always did, and then rearranged her hair so it was pulled tight and off her face.  It wasn’t immor­tality that she envied the Barrani; it was their damn hair.  It never got in the way of anything.

She made it out of the locker room with seconds to spare; Severn caught her by the shoulder and adjusted the stick that held her hair tightly in place so that it actu­ally did the job.

#

Elani Street was, of course, Char­latan central.  It was also, unfor­tu­nately, where real magic could be found if you didn’t have access to the Impe­rial Mages, or worse, the mages of the Arcanum, which access pretty much described ninety-nine percent of the city of Elantra.  Kaylin had never under­stood how it was that people capable of genuine enchant­ments were willing to hunker down with total frauds.

The end result, however, of some fraud was ire, and the end result of ire, if not checked, was directly the purview of the Hawks.  It was more collo­qui­ally called murder.  It didn’t happen in Elani often, because even if you were almost certain the so-called magic you’d purchased was a lump of rock, you couldn’t be as easily certain that the person who’d sold it to you was inca­pable of some­thing more substantial.

There were, however, no murders on the books today.  Or at least not murders that Kaylin knew about, and there­fore not murders that she would be called in to inves­ti­gate.  She’d wanted a few weeks of quiet, and she’d had them.  For some reason, it hadn’t improved her mood.

Severn noticed.  Then again, it was hard not to notice.  While he frequently walked street­side, Kaylin’s acci­dental mishaps with merchant boards now numbered four.

“Kaylin.”  He stepped to her left, and took up patrol posi­tion merchant-side.

She couldn’t bring herself to say it was acci­dental, although she did try.  But the boards that promised to find you your One True Love were a partic­ular sore spot for Kaylin, in part because it was impos­sible to walk past the damn things at any time of day, and not see people waiting in the store­front, behind glass.  Some had the brains to look ill-at-ease, but if they had the brains, they clearly lacked self-control; some just looked desperate and flaky.

All of them would be disappointed.

“You know they piss me off,” she muttered.

“On the wrong day, sunlight pisses you off.”

“Only in the morning.”

“Noon is not consid­ered morning by most people.  Tell me,” he added.  “Because if you keep this up, Margot is going to file an inci­dent report, and you’ll be in the hotseat.”

Margot was the name of the propri­etor of this partic­ular haven for the hope­less.  She was a tall, stat­uesque redhead, with amber eyes that Kaylin would have bet an entire paycheck were magi­cally augmented.  Her voice, absent the actual drivel she used when speaking, was throaty, deep, and almost sinful just to hear.

Kaylin was certain that half of the people who offered Margot their custom secretly hoped that she would be their One True Love.  Sadly, she was certain that Margot was also aware of this, and they’d exchanged heated words about the subject of her lovelorn customers in the past.  Petty jeal­ousy being what it was, however, Kaylin was liked by enough of the other merchants, mostly the less successful ones, that Margot’s attempt to have her summarily sched­uled out of exis­tence – or the exis­tence of Elani Street – had so far failed to take.

“If I knew what was both­ering me,” she finally admitted, “I would have warned you this morning.”

“Warned me?”

“That I’m in a foul mood.”

“Kaylin, the only person who might not notice that is Roshan, Marrin’s newest orphan.  And I have my doubts.”

“I have no idea what’s wrong,” she continued, stead­fastly ignoring that partic­ular comment.  “The foundling hall is running so smoothly right now you’d think someone rich had died and willed the foundlings all their money.  Rennick’s play was a success, and the Swords have been cut to a tenth their previous riot-watch numbers.  I’m not on report.  Mallory is no longer our acting Sergeant.  Caitlin is finally back in the office after her leave.

“But – ”  She exhaled heavily.  “There’s just – some­thing.  I have no idea what the problem is. And if you even suggest that it has some­thing to do with the time of month, you’ll be picking up splin­ters of your teeth well into next year.”

He touched her, gently and briefly, on the shoulder.  “You’ll let me know when you figure it out?”

“You’ll prob­ably be the first person to know.  Unless Marcus radi­cally alters the duty roster.”

#

The day did not get better when their patrol took them to Evanton’s shop.  Kaylin didn’t stop there when she was on duty, because rifling his kitchen took time, and sitting and drinking the scalding hot tea he prepared when she did visit took more of the same.

Like most merchants, Evanton’s shop had a sand­wich board outside.  The paint was faded, the wood slightly warped.  His sign, however, did not offend her; she barely noticed it.  She certainly didn’t trip over it in a way that would snap its hinges shut.

But she did notice the young man who came barreling out of the door toward her.  Grethan.  Once Tha’alani.  Hell, still Tha’alani.  But crip­pled, shut off from the gifts that made the Tha’alani possibly the most feared race in the city.  He couldn’t read minds.  The char­ac­ter­istic racial stalks of the Tha’alani, suspended at the height of his fore­head, just beneath his dark, flat hair, still weaved fran­ti­cally in the air in a little I’m‑upset-help-me dance, and most people – most humans, she corrected herself – wouldn’t know he was inca­pable of actu­ally putting them to use to invade their thoughts.

“Kaylin!”  He said, speaking too loudly in a street that was sparsely populated.

The people that were in it looked up imme­di­ately.  You could always count on curiosity to dim common sense, espe­cially in Elani Street.  Evanton was known to be one of the street’s genuine enchanters; he would have to be, given that he was also one of the few who still had a store­front and never offered love-potions or fortunes.  Had he  visible  size or obvious power, he would prob­ably have terri­fied most of the resi­dents.  He didn’t.

She spoke in a much lower voice.  It was her way of giving a subtle hint; the less subtle hints usually got her a repri­mand, and Grethan looked wide-eyed and wild enough that she didn’t think he deserved them.  Yet.  “Grethan?  Has some­thing happened to Evanton?”

He took a deep breath.  “No.  He told me you’d be coming, and he set me to watch.”

Had it been anyone other than Evanton, Kaylin would have asked how he’d known.  Evanton, however, was not a man who casu­ally explained little details like that to an appren­tice, and if Grethan was valued because he was Evanton’s first promising appren­tice in more years than Kaylin had been alive, he was still on the lower rungs of the ladder.

He was also, she thought, too damn smart to ask.

“You’re not busy, are you?”  Grethan asked, hesi­tating at the door.

“Not too busy to speak with Evanton if he has some­thing he needs to say,” she replied.

Severn, damn him, added, “She’s busy plot­ting the down­fall of Margot.”

Grethan snorted.  “You’re prob­ably going to have to stand in line for that,” he told her, his stalks slowing their frantic dance.  “But Evanton’s in a bit of a mood today, so you might not want to mention her by name.”

“I never want to mention her by name.  You’ll note that it wasn’t me who did,” she replied, giving Severn a very distinct Look.

“Evanton is also not the only one who’s in, as you put it, a bit of a mood,” Severn told Grethan.  “Maybe the two of us should wait outside some­where safe.  Like, say, the docks.”

#

Evanton, contrary to Grethan’s report, was seated by the long bar he called a counter.  It was a bar; some old tavern had sold it to Evanton years before Kaylin had met him.  If you could see one square inch of its actual surface, it was a tidy day.  Given that Evanton was working with beads, needles, leather patches, and some herbs and powders Kaylin didn’t imme­di­ately recog­nize it, it wasn’t a day for surface area.

He looked up as she approached, his lips compressed around a thin line of needles.  Or pins.  She couldn’t see the heads, and couldn’t, at this distance, tell the differ­ence.  He looked more bent and aged than usual – which, given he was the oldest living person she’d ever met if you didn’t count Barrani or Dragons, said some­thing.  Age never showed with Barrani or Dragons, anyway.

“Grethan said you wanted to see me,” she said, care­fully removing a pile of books from a stool a little ways into the shop.  Books were the safest bet; you couldn’t break most of them if the precar­ious pile chose to topple, and you couldn’t crush them – much – by acci­den­tally step­ping on them.

He began to care­fully poke pins into the top of his wrin­kled apron.  When he’d pushed the last of them home, he looked like a very bad version of a sympa­thetic magic doll, handled by someone who didn’t realize they were supposed to stick the pins in point first.  “Wanted is not the right word,” he said curtly.

Kaylin, accus­tomed to his moods, shrugged.  “I’m here anyway.”

“Why?”

“Because Grethan said – ”

“I mean, why were you sent to Elani today?”

She frowned.  “We weren’t sent.  This is our beat, this rota­tion.  For some reason, we’re expected to be able to handle the petty fraud and swin­dling that passes for busi­ness-as-normal in Char­latan Central.”

“We would be you and your Corporal?”

“He’s not my Corporal, and yes.”

Evanton nodded.  He set aside the cloth in his lap, and put beads into about fifty different jars.  He did all of this slowly.  Kaylin, whose middle name was not exactly patience on the best of working days, sat and tried not to grind her teeth.  She knew damn well he could talk and work at the same time; it was what he usually did.

“This does not strictly concern the Hawks,” he finally told her, as he rose.  “Can I make you tea?”  Evanton did not actu­ally like tea; he did, however, seem to find comfort in the social custom of being old enough to make it and offer it.

“I’m on duty, Evanton.”

“Just answer the ques­tion, Private Neya.”

She sighed.  “Yes,” she told him.  “If you’ll talk while you’re doing it, you can make me tea.  I don’t suppose you’ve found cups that have handles?”

#

The answer to the ques­tion was either no, or she’d annoyed him enough by asking that he’d failed to find them.  He made tea, and she waited, seated at the side of a kitchen table that was – yes – clut­tered with small piles of daily debris.  Still, none of the debris moved or crawled, so it was more or less safe.

Evanton’s brows gath­ered and his fore­head furrowed as he sat across from her.  This only deep­ened the lines that time had etched there.  “Very well.  This does not, as I mentioned, concern the Hawks.  It does not, entirely, concern me yet.”

“But you told Grethan to watch for me if I happened to pass by.”

“I may have.  He was hovering, and I dislike that when I’m working.”

Had he been in less of a mood, she would have pointed out that he usually disliked the absence of hoverers when he was working, because he liked to have people fetch and carry; not even his guests were exempt from those duties.  She bit her tongue, however.  It was slightly better than burning it.

“I was in the elemental garden this morning,” he added.

She stilled.  When he didn’t eluci­date, she said, “Isn’t that where you do some of your work?”

“I work there when I am not at all inter­ested in inter­rup­tion,” he replied.  “That was not, however, the case this morning.”

All of Kaylin’s many growing ques­tions shriv­eled and died.  She even put her hands around the sides of the cup, because she felt a momen­tary chill.

Evanton sighed.  He rose, and pulled the key-ring from his left arm.  It was a key-ring only in the loose sense of the word, being larger around than any part of that arm.  “Private,” he said gravely.

“I’m not sure I ever want to set foot in your garden again,” she told him, but she pushed herself away from her teacup.

“I’m sure you don’t,” was the terse reply.  “Espe­cially not today.  But I’m tired.  If you see it for your­self, you’ll spare me the effort of coming up with words.”

#

Because he was Evanton, and his home was a mess, the halls they now walked were narrow and cramped.  Shelves butted against the walls, in mismatched colors and heights.  “Is this one new?”  Kaylin asked, in a tone of voice that clearly said, how could you cram another book­shelf into this space?

“I have an appren­tice now,” Evanton replied.  “And I’m not about to move my work so that he has some­place to shelve his.”

She winced.  She’d had issues with Grethan in the past, but at the moment she felt sorry for him; having to deal with Evanton in this mood should have been enough to send him screaming for cover.

Then again, he was out some­where with Severn.

Evanton reached the unre­mark­able door at the hall’s end.  It looked, to Kaylin’s eye, more rickety and warped than the last time she’d seen it.  He slid the key into the lock, but before he opened the door, he turned to Kaylin and said, “Don’t be surprised to find the garden some­what changed since you last visited.”

Having offered warning, he pushed the door open.

It opened, as always, into a space that was larger in all ways than the building that girded it; it had, for one, no obvious ceiling, and no clearly visible walls.  This garden, as Evanton called it, was older by far than the city of Elantra; it was older than the Dragons or the Barrani.  According to Sana­balis, it had always been here in one guise or another, and while the world existed, it always would.

Evanton was its keeper.

As jobs went, it certainly promised job secu­rity.  Sadly, a bad mistake on the job also promised to end the world, or come so close what was left wouldn’t be in any shape to complain or fire him.

Kaylin blinked at the harsh­ness of this partic­ular daylight, and she followed Evanton in through the door – and into the gale.

On the first occa­sion Kaylin had come here, led by Evanton, it had been breezy, warm, and quiet.  He had assured her at that time that that state was the norm for his garden.  Looking at his back, she saw his grubby working tunic had been replaced entirely by deep blue robes – and that these robes were now the new homes of trailing rivulets of water.  The wind picked at his sodden hem and strands of his hair.  Clearly the garden wasn’t giving him much respect.

Kaylin’s hair flew free as the stick Severn had care­fully adjusted was yanked out by the wind; this lasted for at most half a minute before the strands were too heavy.  They now clung to her face.

“Evanton!”

He didn’t turn at the sound of his name, and Kaylin shouted it again, putting more force behind it.  When he still didn’t turn, she took a step toward him, and saw that the grass – or what had once been grass – was actu­ally a few inches of mud.  Her boots sank into it.

If the small and sepa­rate shrines that had been dedi­cated in corners of this place were still standing, the visi­bility was poor enough that she couldn’t see them.

She almost shouted his name again, but he turned just as she reached his back.  “Follow,” he told her, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting to be heard.

#