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.
