Dragons were not exactly light.
She bowed when she entered the room, her hair askew. She had, as usual, flown through the office at a run, and paused only to let Caitlin fuss a bit.
But she sagged slightly when she saw her nemesis sitting on the table: a pale candle with an unlit wick. Grimacing, she took her seat opposite Sanabalis.
“Good of you to come,” he said. This was code for I’ve been waiting half an hour. She had thought she would only be half an hour late, and revised that estimate up by about thirty minutes.
“I was delayed,” she said carefully, “by a request from Ybelline of the—”
He lifted a hand. “It is not my concern.”
He waved toward the candle, and Kaylin said, without thinking, “Instead of trying to get me to understand the shape of fire, can you teach me the shape of water?”
His utter silence was almost profound, and his eyes had shifted from calm, placid gold to something that was tinged slightly orange. Red was the color of death in Dragon eyes.
Orange just meant they might pull an arm off for fun.
“It is very interesting that you should ask that, Kaylin. You will of course amuse an old man by telling him why.”
Kicking herself was not much fun, but she did it anyway. “It’s—”
His eyes shifted shades. His inner lids began to fall. Certainly made his eyes a more vibrant color. “Why water, Kaylin? Why now?”
Because she was either brave or stupid, she said, “Why do you care so much?” She didn’t tilt back in her chair; she couldn’t affect that much nonchalance in the face of a concerned—she liked that word—Dragon lord. But she did try.
It wasn’t the answer he was expecting. She could tell by the way he blinked; the last few weeks had given her that much. “Water is pervasive,” he said at last, and his eyes had shaded back to gold, but it was a bright and fiery gold, unlike the normal calm of Dragon eyes. Too keen, and too shiny.
“All of the elements—and that is a crude word, Kaylin, and it conveys almost nothing of their essence—have faces. They are death, if you discern that shape, but they are life, if you discern others.”
She thought of the shape of fire. Looked at the candle. It wasn’t life or death she had been struggling with. It was just lighting a damn wick. “Fire burns,” she said at last.
“Yes.”
“And without it, we die in the cold, if we’re unlucky enough to live there.”
“Yes.”
“There’s more?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to explain it, are you?”
“No. But I am not unpleased, Kaylin.”
“Why is that, exactly?” She didn’t often say something right to her teachers, and she thought it might be useful if she ever wanted it to happen a second time.
“Water,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”
She knew she was chewing on her lower lip. “Well,” she said at last, “you can drown in it.”
“Yes.”
“And the storms at sea—”
“Yes.”
“But if you don’t drink it, you die.”
“Very good.”
“And so do the plants, in a draught.”
“Indeed.”
“And there’s more.” But this wasn’t a question. Water is deep. “Water is deep,” she said, musing aloud.
“Yes. Those are the words of the Keeper.”
“The who?”
“You met with him today,” Sanabalis added softly.
“Oh. You mean Evanton?”
His brow rose at the tone of her voice.
“Well, he’s just an old—” And fell again as her voice trailed off, remembering him in his elemental garden.
“He was one of my students,” Sanabalis said quietly, “but he does not visit, and cannot.” He looked at her carefully. “He showed you his responsibility.”
She nodded slowly.
“And you saw something in the water there.”
She nodded again. “A girl,” she said quietly. “Bruised face. Dark hair. Wide eyes. She called me by name,” she added softly.
“Did you recognize her?” His gaze was keen now, sharp enough to cut. Had she been a liar, she would have fallen silent, afraid to test that edge. But she was Kaylin.
“No. But I—I need to find her, Sanabalis.”
“Yes,” he told her softly. Where in this case soft was like the rumble of an earthquake giving its only warning.
“You know about this.”
“I don’t, Kaylin. Or I did not. But water—it is the element of the living. It is the element to which we are most strongly tied, or to which you and your kind are. It is the element that speaks most strongly to the Oracles.”
Kaylin failed entirely to keep from grimacing.
“You disdain the Oracles?”
“They speak in riddles when they speak at all, and afterward, they tell you that whatever gibberish they said was of course true.”
“It is only afterward that the contexts of the words have their full meaning,” he replied patiently.
She stopped. “You’ve been talking to the Oracles?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“The Emperor desired it,” he replied, carefully and slowly. “And in truth, they came to him, and they were ill at ease.”
“How ill?”
“Perhaps a week ago, perhaps a little more, they were woken from their sleep by a dream.”
“All of them?”
“All of them. Even those who are mere apprentices and have not yet earned the right to live in the temple and its grounds.”
“It wasn’t a good dream.”
“It wasn’t a dream at all.”
“A—what do they call them?”
“Vision.” His momentary impatience was clear.
“Of what?”
“Water,” he told her.
“Water.”
“Yes. The waters are deep,” he added, speaking almost exactly in the tone and style of Evanton. “And things sleep within those depths that have not been seen by even the living Dragons, save perhaps two.”
She froze. “Something is waking.”
“In their dreams, yes.”
“What?”
“They’re Oracles, Kaylin,” he replied.
“So you don’t know.”
“No. They’re certain it’s not a good thing for the city. Which has a port. The Sages have been poring over the words and symbols,” he added, with just a flicker of his brow.
“And they get what anyone sane gets, which