The Chronicles of Elantra Bundle

by Michelle Sagara

  And that was the word for this room.

  Wall-to-wall paintings stretched out toward the devouring jaws of a Dragon in fury, and above those paintings, light shone from layered windows in the ceiling. The light didn’t directly touch the paintings themselves; someone had designed this room with at least that much care.

  She started to walk toward the right wall, and stopped there. A bed was tucked into the corner, beneath an impressive set of cupboards, and a desk was pressed against the wall that held the door. A chair was tucked into it, but the layer of dust across its back made clear how often that desk was used.

  “Where is the Oracle?” she asked Master Sabrai.

  “He is there,” Master Sabrai said, and lifted a robed arm.

  Tucked kitty-corner from the bed was a very tall easel, which held a canvas.

  “At work,” he added, lowering his voice. The two words held concern.

  “It’s not good for him to work?”

  “It is. But not…like this.”

  “No?”

  “He doesn’t eat unless he’s fed. He doesn’t sleep unless he’s drugged. While many of the other Oracles confront their nightmares, he confronts his—but he doesn’t require sleep to do so.”

  “He does need sleep,” she began, and then bit her tongue. Sometimes it flapped way too much.

  “He won’t be aware of your presence,” Master Sabrai told her.

  Kaylin nodded. “Does it disturb him if we watch him at work?”

  “Not usually.”

  “And if it does?”

  “You’ll know.”

  She wasn’t sure she liked the tone in which the words were delivered. She also wasn’t sure she liked the Dragon on the far wall, but she had to approach it to see the boy because it was directly at his back. What kind of child could paint something so obviously deadly, so beautifully savage, and remain unperturbed by the reality of it?

  An Oracle, idiot.

  She approached the canvas as if it were a manor wall, and she were climbing over it instead of going through the guardhouse, the way visitors who were welcome usually did.

  She wasn’t wearing too much in the way of armor, so she didn’t make a lot of noise. But as she was at last within touching distance of the back of the stretched cloth, she could hear the boy’s breath, could hear the small clunk of a palette being settled on what looked, to her eye, like the flat of a bar stool. She couldn’t see the boy yet, but could see the hand that had set it down.

  Master Sabrai was behind her, and Lord Sanabalis had chosen to approach at a vastly more leisurely pace than Kaylin, so neither of them were close enough to stop the small noise that came out of her mouth when she finally rounded the edge of the easel and came face-to-face with what the boy was painting.

  It was her. It was Kaylin Neya.

  The boy’s brush hand stopped for a moment; the fine, fine hairs of his brush hovered steadily above the canvas, almost in midstroke. His eyes were a milky blue, and he turned them toward her, staring as if lids were decoration and blinking was a fashion statement. One that he was above making.

  She almost introduced herself, remembering the manners that her mother had tried to teach her in a different place a lifetime ago. But her eyes were drawn to the painting and held there, and anything she thought she might say about herself seemed suddenly superfluous.

  What, after all, could you say to a boy who was painting the marks that lay hidden beneath your uniform? What could you say to a boy who had removed the uniform, exchanging it for a backless, armless gown, so that the symbols that adorned her skin were, in their entirety, laid bare?

  She was half turned away from him, in the painting, so that three quarters of her back could be seen; her hair, which she always wore up when she worked, was in fact pulled high above her neck and pinned there by something he had not yet added. If it were true to life, it would be a stick of some sort. Certainly nothing ornate.

  But this wasn’t true to life; Kaylin had never worn a dress like this one; she didn’t even own something that came close. It was simple, at first glance—but first glance was something that she gave it only because the marks were so accurate and so prominent they dwarfed everything else about the portrait.

  “He’s been working on this one for almost a week,” Master Sabrai told her.

  “Interesting, isn’t it, Private Neya?”

  The old bastard could have warned her, she thought, but the annoyance was halfhearted enough that she couldn’t even put it into words—and annoyed was something she was good at. The brush started to move again.

  “He works in oil?” she asked Master Sabrai.

  “He works in whatever he can get his hands on, and many of his most…useful…works have been done in pencils and watercolors,” the Master replied. “But if oils are here, he tends to use them. The paintings are much clearer, and much cleaner, when he does. They also take much longer,” he added quietly. “This is you, isn’t it?”

  “You can’t tell?”

  He took one look at Kaylin’s street uniform, and then looked at the painting. His raised eyebrow said the rest, and she had to agree with him. If she didn’t know herself, she probably wouldn’t have made the connection so easily.

  “But Sanabalis, you said—”

  “I said the image of the girl was taken from his memory with his permission,” the Dragon lord replied.

  “But you implied—”

  “Kaylin. Be a Hawk.”

  But the Hawk was not in the picture; not yet. Just Kaylin herself, and the dress, and the markings. Without a word, she unbuttoned one bloused sleeve and shoved it up past her elbow. It fell, and she cursed in Aerian—it being somewhat quieter and less likely to be known than Elantran—before she rolled it up so it would damn well stay put.

  Stroke for stroke, dot for dot, line for line, the marks were the same. She had known they would be, but…she had had to check.

  “Why?” the Dragon lord asked, and she realized that she was half muttering to herself. She was flustered.

  “You can see,” Master Sabrai told her softly, “why many find Everly disconcerting. Even when the portrait is flattering—which, to be honest, it seldom is.”

  Kaylin nodded. It was as if someone had not only walked over her grave, but had come back to do a little song and dance, and to paint graffiti on the headstone.

  “Are these—these portraits—are they accurate?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean—Well…you know when Oracles tell you things, they don’t make any sense?”

  Lord Sanabalis trod on her foot.

  She hastily added, instead of the ouch that was appropriate, “I mean, until you know more of the context.” It was lame, but clearly Master Sabrai was accustomed to worse.

  “Yes,” he said drily. “I am well aware of what most people think of Oracular information.”

  “I don’t—I don’t even own a dress like that one. It’s…It’s not even decent.”

  “Kaylin—”

  “No, I mean really—I wouldn’t even sleep in something like that!”

  “Understood,” Master Sabrai replied, “although you must understand in turn that current fashion and the Oracle Halls are not well acquainted. And to answer your question, Kaylin, the portraits themselves are indicative of some future state, but like the verbal prophecies, they are not always about the present, not always about the future. They are possibilities, but not certainties.”

  “But is it significant?”

  The boy was painting almost furiously now. It was a small wonder that his hands weren’t shaking, he was moving so quickly. It gave Kaylin hives. It also gave her an excuse to actually look at the rest of his face; the eyes had been…hard to look at. His hair was a kind of matted brown, and it was long enough to be pulled back from his face in much the same way hers was—although she thought she saw a paintbrush shoved in the knot that hung slightly to the right of center. His skin as almost translucent; the sunlight that came i
n from above might add color to the gallery, but it revealed none in Everly.

  He wore something that made sackcloth look good, except for the splatters and smears. She thought the color had once been a natural shade of ivory, but now it was a riot, and she imagined that no one—not even the most compulsive of cleaners—could restore it to its original state.

  His legs were crossed beneath him. His shoulders, however, were straight. His lips were almost the color of his skin, and his eyes were ringed with dark circles.

  “This is what you wanted me to see?” she whispered to Sanabalis.

  “No. But I thought you should.”

  She nodded.

  “How did you know to look—”

  “For the girl?”

  She nodded again. She did not mention the Tha’alani boy who had done the watercolor that she had instantly recognized.

  “I didn’t,” he replied quietly. “But all of the Oracles, even those who are not yet living upon the grounds, or those who are accomplished enough at dealing with the present to now live beyond them, had nightmares, Kaylin.

  “And you thought—”

  “Yes. Since they woke, since it began, since before it began, Everly has been painting your portrait.”

  “And the others?”

  “Those who have some drawing skill—and who are not obsessed with it in the way that Everly is—have drawn bodies,” he said quietly. “Or buildings. Many of the buildings would be ones you recognize. I believe you cover much of the city on your rounds.”

  “Bodies.”

  “Yes. Usually facedown in water. Sometimes trapped too far beneath the surface of it to float.”

  “You said many of the buildings?”

  “The ones that are mostly standing.” He had joined her now, and his foot was almost pressed against hers.

  “That tidal wave you mentioned—”

  “Yes,” Master Sabrai said wearily. “It was not a chance comment.” The Master’s hand covered his eyes for a moment. He started to speak, and the seven syllables that left his mouth were not in a language that Kaylin knew. Not, she would have said, one that she had ever heard before, and given how many she had heard in Elantra, it was surprising.

  But he stopped himself, and she realized that he had not intended to speak at all. His very Elantran cursing, on the other hand, she had no trouble with.

  Lord Sanabalis lifted a hand. “Shall I send for Sigrenne, Master Sabrai?” He spoke slowly and carefully.

  “No. No, I’m—fine.”

  “We will not detain you further.”

  “You will,” he said firmly, “stay for as long as you deem necessary.”

  “If you—”

  “I said I was fine.”

  “As you wish.”

  Kaylin watched them both. She had a question or two about what he had started to say, but she liked walking, and she hazarded a guess that she wouldn’t be if she asked. But she looked at the painting again, her left sleeve rolled up. “I haven’t changed,” she said. “Or the marks haven’t.”

  “No.”

  “The dress—”

  “It is not a current fashion, no. But I think it significant in some way.”

  “Why?”

  “Look away from the markings, Kaylin. Look at the rest of the painting.”

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  “No.”

  She frowned. “It’s—there’s someone else there.”

  In pencil, in faint outline, blocked out, waiting for color and brush to give it life.

  “Yes. At least one person. Possibly more.”

  “You think the dress is ceremonial somehow?”

  “I think it probable, yes.”

  She swallowed and looked at the dress. It was white, not ivory, but it was edged in gold, and the gold itself was bright and almost metallic. There were words embroidered there, words that seemed in shape and form very similar to the ones that marked her skin. They were smaller, and less detailed, and they did not glow in the way the marks did. Because in Everly’s painting, the marks were glowing faintly.

  Her hands were outstretched, or at least her arms were; he had not yet painted the hands, and what they held, he therefore kept to himself. But the dress seemed formal for all its simplicity.

  “When do you think he’ll finish?” she asked Master Sabrai.

  “Soon, if the gods are kind.”

  “And if they aren’t?”

  “Soon.”

  Sanabalis did not step on her foot. “I think—I think I need to see the finished painting.”

  “Yes. So Lord Sanabalis has said.”

  “But—”

  “But you are not entirely comfortable watching him work?”

  It embarrassed her. But it was true—she wasn’t. She had thought to pity him, and she was now ashamed of the impulse; he wasn’t so much a child as a conduit, and Kaylin was not Tha’alani; there were things about herself that she didn’t want anyone else to see.

  And she couldn’t control what he did see.

  “Can we talk to him?”

  “You can try,” Master Sabrai said. “But he is not always easily distracted.”

  She held her breath for a moment, wanting to ask both Sabrai and Sanabalis to leave. Knowing that it would be the wrong thing to ask. Then she said to Everly, “My name is Kaylin Neya.”

  He didn’t appear to notice. His hands continued their manic dance, stopping only to touch palette, to pull some color out of a mixture of two or three, as if by magic, and to transfer that to canvas.

  Okay. That was a dead end.

  She thought about grabbing his brush, and decided against it because she wasn’t certain that Master Sabrai wouldn’t break her fingers. She thought about it for a moment longer, and then looked at the palette itself. Looked at the canvas, at the area that had been blocked out in some fashion, but still lay shrouded in the near-white of paintless surface. Frowning, she said to Master Sabrai, “Does he often work in pencils?”

  “Almost never, although as I have said, he does use them.”

  “Where would they be?”

  “Behind him, in the box on the floor. He keeps everything in it that might be of use. We take out the food before insects or mice find it,” he added helpfully.

  Kaylin moved around Everly, and opened the long, rectangular case. Then she found what she was looking for—a slender stick of gray charcoal. She rose, went to stand beside Everly, and watched him work.

  Then she lifted the charcoal and began to draw on the canvas.

  She heard the sharp intake of breath from both Sabrai and Sanabalis, but she ignored it. She expected Everly to say something, to do something.

  But what he did do was not what she’d expected. He set his brush down on his palette, but instead of reacting in outrage, he got down from his stool, and reached for the same box Kaylin had opened. He drew out a long piece of charcoal and came back to his stool, where he clambered up on the seat.

  It was the only thing that reminded her that this very disturbing child was, in fact, a child.

  But he turned before he touched the canvas, and he looked at her, and his eyes—she almost froze in place. Did freeze. They were the color of water.

  He touched Kaylin firmly, grabbing the hand that held the charcoal, and pushing it toward the canvas. She dutifully followed his lead, and began to add something to the work itself.

  She didn’t touch the image of herself—couldn’t, really; this close, it would have been like carving your initials in the wooden arms of a throne—say, the Imperial Throne, with the Dragon Emperor in it. Instead, she touched the area in the background that hadn’t been touched yet, beginning to draw, awkwardly and self-consciously, extra bodies. Not many. The boy’s hand pushed hers away, but not in anger; he wanted space to add to the work himself, to join her awkward, jerky lines with lines that were smooth and graceful.

  But she had been attempting to draw someone Severn’s height, and Everly was drawing something else. Not quit
e someone, yet, but she thought it would be. And since it wasn’t her, she was fascinated by it.

  “Private Neya,” Lord Sanabalis said, in a cool tone of voice.

  At the sound of his voice, Everly looked up. He didn’t, however, look terrified. He just…looked.

  “I believe that what you are doing would be forbidden by the Oracles if it had ever occurred to them that someone would try.”

  “Oh.”

  Master Sabrai’s voice joined in, but she was too busy watching Everly’s handiwork to look up.

  “It does not disturb Everly,” the Master of the Oracle Hall said in a hushed voice. “Indeed, he seemed to welcome the input. I would not have thought it possible,” he conceded, to the chill of Sanabalis’s voice, “but perhaps because she is the subject, she has…some say.”

  “Some say in the future?”

  “We don’t control what we see, as you well know. Nor do we control what is done with what we see. But…”

  Kaylin lifted a hand.

  “Private Neya?”

  “It’s her,” she said quietly. “He’s drawing her.”

  “Her?”

  “The girl I saw in the water.”

  “So. She is part of his vision.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “But you are a larger part.”

  “I have to find her. And I think I must because she’s here.”

  “Where is here?”

  But Kaylin had no answer to that—there was no scenery yet.

  Still, it gave her hope, in spite of the dress.

  CHAPTER 10

  Sanabalis was quiet on the ride back to the Halls of Law. It wasn’t unusual for him to be quiet, but his quiet was usually a wall in the face of Kaylin’s tirades. Now, it was something more contemplative.

  She contented herself with silence, as well, thinking about the shock of Everly’s eyes, the certainty of his movements, the sense that he was simply a tool in the hands of…of his vision. Lame, Kaylin.

  When they were well past the finer grounds of manors that lay behind sturdy fences and even sturdier guards, Lord Sanabalis looked at her. His eyes were not quite gold, but not yet orange, and they were lidded. He wasn’t angry, then, but he was probably concerned.