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.
CHAPTER 2
The garden’s size was, and had always been, somewhat elastic. Kaylin, who had previously walked a few yards to pay her respects at the elemental shrine of Water, with its deep, dark and utterly still pool, had also walked for miles and hours to reach the same damn shrine. She did not, therefore, react with any obvious surprise when Evanton’s trek through the gale took an hour. It might have taken less time if not for the mud, the wind and the driving rain.
But when Evanton called a halt to this grueling trek, it was obvious why: he had reached a door. Not an entire building, of which a door would be a part. That would have been too simple. No, it was a standing door, absent frame or wall. It did not, however, possess a doorward; Kaylin was spared the brief and magical discomfort of placing her palm against it before she was granted entry.
She was not, however, spared the effort of forcing the door open; the wind seemed to push from the other side, and it required all of her weight, shoulder against cold, wet surface, to move the damn thing—which didn’t even have hinges.
But when the door was open, the howl of the wind suddenly stopped, and Kaylin saw a glimpse of crackling fire in an old, stone hearth before Evanton unceremoniously shoved her out of the way. The door shut, and on this side, she could see both its hinges and its frame.
They seemed to be standing in a squat cottage of some type. Or they would have been, if cottages had been made of solid stone.
“Sorry,” Evanton said, pulling the hood of his dripping robe from his face. “But I can’t even hear myself think in all that noise.”
As his robes were still recognizably the same dark blue, Kaylin assumed they were still within the space he referred to as the garden. She pushed her hair out of her face; she would have to wait to pin it back, because the wind hadn’t returned the stick it had yanked out.
“We’ll try the tea again,” Evanton told her, peeling his sleeves off his arms. “This time, I might even condescend to drink some of it.”
When they were seated around a small—and miraculously uncluttered—table, two solid mugs between them, Kaylin said, “Water, earth and air.”
Evanton raised a white brow, and then nodded. “Yes. The elements of this particular storm.” He added, after a pause, “It’s good to know you’re still observant.”
“That’s generally considered my job.”
“Yes. Well. It’s generally considered the job of most of the residents of Elani Street to find true love,
