Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(115)

“It has expanded, yes,” the Arkon replied. “If the castelord is correct, we may be able to halt the expansion.”

“Did it work for Teela?” Kaylin shouted.

“I’m not mortal,” Mandoran shouted back. “I can hear you if you’re not screeching!”

“Just answer the question!”

“Yes. Wherever she is currently confined is affected by the shield.”

Kaylin hesitated. The marks on her arms were not glowing. She squinted, swiveling on the Arkon’s back to get a glimpse of Elani Street. The familiar squawked, loudly, in her ear.

“Arkon!”

The Arkon roared.

“I think—I think we need to find Evanton.”

*

If turning Hawks to ash had not been illegal—and difficult, given she was on his back—Kaylin would have been smoldering. At best.

Mandoran and Annarion weren’t fond of the idea, either—which was, in Mandoran’s case, perfectly understandable. “Why?” the former demanded. Loudly.

“It’s the elements,” she replied. “I don’t understand how—or why—they’re involved. I know the disturbance is centered on the Winding Path. But—something must happen to Evanton, or his Garden—in the future. Which is probably really, really close.”

“The Tha’alani quarter is not destroyed for an hour and a half,” Mandoran told her. “From now. That’s all the time we have.”

“I know that,” Kaylin snapped—although technically, she hadn’t. “But the water was outside of the Garden. Yes, it was confined in the Keeper’s abode—but it shouldn’t have been able to rain in the store.” And worse. “I think—I think the water that came from the future and merged with the water here wasn’t confined in the same way in that future.

“If the Keeper was dead, there wouldn’t be a fief. Or seven.”

This was true, given everything Evanton had ever said about the Garden. Or anything the elements had said about themselves. But she couldn’t let go of the notion. “Ask Teela.”

“Teela is preoccupied at the moment—” His words cut off as the Arkon banked sharply. Kattea shrieked, and Kaylin let the Arkon know just how useful fancy flying maneuvers weren’t. “Teela says the equivalent of what?”

Kaylin laughed. “In Leontine, right?”

“It’s a remarkably flexible language.”

“Yes, well. If she—”

Annarion said, with vastly more distaste, “She has almost finished indulging in Leontine metaphor.” It was amazing to Kaylin that he and Mandoran could be so close, could have spent all of their lives in each other’s pockets, and be so very, very different. “Arkon, she asks that you honor Kaylin’s request.” This last was said in very formal High Barrani.

The Arkon, however, was already on it.

*

Kaylin knocked with almost enough force to stave the door in. “Evanton!”

Grethan opened the door, his eyes wild; they were almost brown. The stalks on his forehead were weaving frantically. “Kaylin!” No rain fell in the store at his back, and the floor looked dry. This should have been a comfort.

“What’s happened? Where’s Evanton?”

“He’s in—I think he’s in—the Garden.”

“We need to talk with him. It’s—” She started to say an emergency. Grethan’s expression, however, made it clear that he knew.

“I can’t reach him.”

“What?”

“I can’t—I can’t enter the Garden.” He reached out, grabbed her shoulders, dug his fingers into her arms. She let him. Had he been older there was a very real chance she would have broken his fingers or one of his arms—but his fear was so strong she couldn’t, for a moment, see him as adult. As a threat.

Grethan was Tha’alani. His forehead stalks, however, were decorative. He could not join—or touch—the Tha’alaan, as the rest of his kin could. The only way for Grethan to reach it at all, the only way to alleviate the isolation that was almost unknown to the Tha’alani, was through the elemental water.

“Slow down,” she said, forcing herself to do the same, although she had no time. She could practically feel the Arkon breathing down her neck. “Grethan, slow down. Where did you last see Evanton? He’s not in the Garden?”

“There is no Garden.”

*

Kaylin headed—sprinted—toward the rickety, narrow hall on the other side of the kitchen. She wasn’t certain whether or not Grethan followed, and at the moment, she didn’t care. She made Teela’s Leontine seem tame as she skidded to a stop.

“Grethan...”

“I told you. It’s gone.”

The hall with which Kaylin was most familiar was no longer a squeaky mess of narrow boards, made even narrower by overstuffed shelving. It hadn’t transformed into a grander hall, and it hadn’t, as halls did in Tiamaris, remade itself to better accommodate the actual number of visitors.

It had simply ceased to exist.

Squawk.

“I know,” she whispered. “We’ve got a problem.”

*

The Arkon surrendered draconic form when Kaylin returned to the street. Gilbert, Kattea, Mandoran and Annarion slid off his shrinking back before they ended up in a pile atop his human form. Grethan held back, his toes on the threshold, his hands gripping the frame of the door.