she stopped. “Wait...late for what?”
This made Evanton chuckle. “You’ve clearly grown accustomed to apologizing for tardiness. Regardless, I was expecting you somewhat earlier.”
“I made lunch,” Grethan said quietly, alleviating Kaylin’s mounting silence.
“Good. I find myself somewhat hungry.” Evanton nodded to Grethan. “Lunch will be served in the Garden.”
“We’re in a bit of a hurry...” Kaylin trailed off, glancing at Teela, hoping for a bit of support. She got nothing.
“You’re too busy to keep an old, frail man company while he eats his first meal of the day?”
“...Or not.” She took a seat beside him, though she was not at all hungry, for once. Teela did not sit; she folded her arms, looking down at them.
“Have some tea.”
“I’ve already had tea this morning.” Evanton didn’t care for tea himself.
“I see. What exactly brings you here today?”
“How much do you know about Shadows?”
“An odd question to ask.” He didn’t sound at all surprised to hear it.
“We’re investigating a murder case. Three young men were found in the basement of a house on the Winding Path.”
Evanton nodded, waiting. For an old man who sometimes defined the word impatient, he was pretty good at it.
“Across the street from the house where the bodies were discovered is another house. It seems like an entirely normal house...but one of its occupants is not exactly human.”
“And not, I’m assuming, Barrani, either.”
“Definitively not Barrani,” Teela said. She’d mostly abandoned the conversation to Kaylin, but clearly felt this needed to be said.
Evanton rose. “Are you claiming that he is Shadowed?”
“He claims to have come from Ravellon. The only Ravellon I currently know is at the heart of the fiefs—and the only things that escape it usually leave a trail of bodies in their wake. If we’re lucky, the bodies stay dead.”
Evanton’s expression flattened. “You have left this man in the home he now occupies?”
“I know it sounds crazy. But he had a child with him. A girl.”
“This girl also claims to have come from Ravellon?”
“No. From Nightshade. He brought her across the bridge.”
“And just happened to find a suitable house in which to raise her?” The word skeptical did not do justice to his tone or expression.
Put that way, it sounded bad. Kaylin poked the adornment draped across her shoulders; he lifted his head and yawned. Evanton frowned.
“You saw this so-called Shadow?”
The small dragon nodded.
“And you accepted his presence?”
And yawned.
“Kaylin, do not take all of your cues from your familiar. While he does seem to serve you, he is not mortal. He is not human. His concerns and his fears are not—and cannot be—yours.”
“I know that, but they spoke to each other. He’s pretty clear on what he thinks is dangerous, and he didn’t consider Gilbert a danger.”
“Gilbert.”
“I think Kattea probably named him.”
“Gilbert.” Evanton shook his head. “Were you alone?”
“Severn, Teela, Tain and Bellusdeo were with me at the time. Bellusdeo was willing to accept Gilbert’s existence, and if she does...” Kaylin offered Evanton a fief shrug.
“So you came to ask me about...Gilbert.”
“Well, no. I mean yes, but not just about Gilbert.” Kaylin sighed, resigning herself to the idea of Marcus’s inevitable snarling back at the office. “Let me tell you about my morning.”
* * *
Teela added the details that Kaylin glossed over in her attempt to get to the office in time to preserve her job—and her throat—while Evanton listened carefully. He asked no questions until she reached the end of her narrative.
Suprisingly, his first question was not directed to Kaylin.
“An’Teela, have you seen the ruins just south of the West March?”
Teela frowned. “No.”
“They are not easily accessible; simple scholars have managed to lose themselves in the surrounding forest without reaching their place of study. They are, however, accessible if the scholar is an Arcanist.”
“This is relevant?”
“It may be. It is not clear who dwelled in those ruins; they are architecturally inconsistent with the West March and its environs. The ruins existed before the Barrani and the Dragons started any of their ill-advised wars. As ruins do, they attracted the attention of the curious.”
Teela said nothing.
“Entry to these buildings was often complicated—even after the buildings themselves were deserted. Kaylin, I believe you have some experience of this.”
Kaylin bristled. “Helen is not a ruin.”
“No. But her appearance—both internal and external—is under her own control. She cannot be easily invoked or altered against her wishes. I am not claiming that the basement of a nondescript building within the city is in any way equivalent to Helen—but there were always wards and protections cast upon buildings, and death does not always render them inactive.
“From the sounds of your staircase, it is possible that the homes in that area were built upon the foundations of older works.”
“But who would know enough about that to sneak into a basement with a member of the family? And what would they stand to gain by killing the three men?”
“Investigation of this nature is what you’re paid to do.”
“Meaning,” Teela said, “you don’t know.”
Evanton raised a brow at her tone, but nodded. “I admit that the bodies—and their presence or absence—is new to me. But difficulties of this nature are, sadly, becoming more familiar.”
“What exactly is the nature of these difficulties?” Kaylin demanded.
Evanton, however, shook his head. “That, I cannot reveal to you at this time. However, I will, I fear, be spending more time in the Garden in the immediate future.
