a play,” Severn said, shrugging slightly. The left corner of his mouth was turned up in something that hinted at amusement. “You’re familiar with plays?”
Kaylin snorted. She read the description of stage materials—mostly the painted facades of buildings and bushes, in different sizes. And, she thought, in odd colors. “Poynter’s road?”
Severn nodded. “It’s—”
“I know where it is—but the buildings don’t look anything like that on Poynter’s.”
“Kaylin—”
“No, Corporal Handred, allow her to speak freely. It will, in theory, get it out of her system.”
“You want me to read a play?”
“Not exactly. The play itself is not complete, or not complete to our satisfaction. The author’s name might be familiar to you.” He raised one brow.
“Richard Rennick.” She looked at Severn. “Should we know him?”
“He’s the Imperial Playwright,” Severn told her quietly. “The position is held by one Playwright every five years. There’s usually a competition of some sort—a series of different plays staged for the Emperor. He apparently won, three years ago.”
Lord Sanabalis said, “The Emperor feels that human arts should be encouraged. Don’t look at me like that, Kaylin. Dragons seldom have an interest in drama.”
“Who’s the judge of this contest?”
“The Emperor.”
“So the winner is the person who appeals most to someone who doesn’t even like plays?”
“Something very like that,” he replied.
“And you want us to … work with this Rennick?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps you should read more than three pages.”
She grimaced. “Sanabalis—”
“Lord Sanabalis,” Severn corrected her.
“Lord Sanabalis, then. What on earth do I know about plays?”
“Clearly nothing.” He frowned. “However it is not for your expertise in the dramatic arts that you have been seconded.”
“Go on.”
“It is for your expertise—such as it is—on the Tha’alani.”
It was Kaylin’s turn to frown, but some of the exasperation left her, then. “I’m not an expert,” she told him quietly.
“No. But the Tha’alani seconded to the Court would possibly be even less comfortable in an advisory role.”
“If they can’t—” She stopped. “Why has the Emperor commissioned a play about the Tha’alani?”
Lord Sanabalis didn’t answer. But she met his eyes; they were their usual placid gold. His lower membranes, however, were up.
“It’s because of—of the water, isn’t it?”
“The tidal wave.”
“That one.”
“Yes. I am not aware of how much you saw, or how much you read about after the fact—but the Tha’alani, led by their castelord, left their Quarter in larger numbers than the city has ever seen. They walked to the docks, and they spread out along the port and the seawall. When the waters began to shift—and it was dramatic, Kaylin, even to one who has seen as much as I have—”
“You weren’t there,” she told him, but the words were soft. “You were with us.”
“I accessed records when I returned to the Palace.” He was now using his teacher tone of voice.
And I didn’t, Kaylin supplied. She glanced at Severn, who nodded very slightly. She cleared her throat. It was still hard for her to think about the Tha’alaan, and the Tha’alani were the Tha’alaan in some ways. “They hoped to save the city, if the waters rose.”
“Yes. But I invite you to think about appearances, Kaylin.”
“The wave didn’t hit the city.”
“No. It did not. The Oracles, however, were not widely bandied about. For many people—for almost all of them— the first warning of danger was the sight of the water itself, rising. The storm before it signified nothing, to them—it was merely weather.”
She nodded slowly.
“From their point of view—from what they could see—the Tha’alani went to the waters, and the waters rose.”
She closed her eyes.
“You understand our difficulty.”
She did.
“You yourself feared the Tha’alani. You do not do so now,” he added. “But you must understand the fear that people have.”
She nodded quietly.
“The Emperor understands it as well. He cannot, of course, explain the whole of what happened—and given the sparsity of reports generated by your office in the wake of events, I am not entirely certain he could explain it even if that was his desire. I am not, however, here to lecture you on the quality of your paperwork. I believe it best that some things remain uncommitted to paper.
“I, however, was fully debriefed. What I know, he now knows. He will not expose The Keeper, and no mention of the young Tha’alani man will leave the Court for that reason. Nor will the young Tha’alani man face the Emperor’s Justice, for that reason.”
The fact that the Emperor couldn’t reach him probably had something to do with it, in Kaylin’s opinion. She managed to keep this to herself. Instead, she returned to the matter at hand. “So this Richard Rennick wrote a … play. About the Tha’alani.”
“He wrote a play about the Tha’alani’s attempt to save the city, yes.”
“But all of it’s garbage. Because we’re not allowed to tell the truth.”
“Garbage is an unfortunate choice of word. Lose it,” he added, condescending to speak Elantran. He must have been serious. There were whole days where he affected complete ignorance of the language which most of the city actually spoke.
She picked up the sheaf of dog-eared pages. “Have you even read this?”
“I have. It is not, I believe, the current version, if that’s of any consequence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where we could prevail upon the Tha’alani at Court, we did. The effect that this
