There was, however, no stuff here, where here was a room that looked very familiar: rounded walls, a long, flat—and uncluttered—table in the room’s center, around which were placed six chairs. None of those chairs were occupied.
But first appearances were deceiving. The Arkon was last into the room, and when he closed the door at their backs, it vanished into the wall. It left no seams and no trace of its previous existence at all. Kaylin looked at the curved gray of walls; there were wall sconces set at regular intervals—six—about six feet off the ground, but instead of torches, they contained stones. There did not appear to be much else in the room.
She glanced at Sanabalis.
Sanabalis walked over to the top of the unadorned table, placed his palm across its surface, and spoke a few words. They were High Barrani, and they were softly spoken.
The surface of the table rippled beneath his steady palm, as if the wood grain had turned, in that instant, to water. The table, Kaylin realized, was a mirror.
CHAPTER 5
It was more than a little disconcerting to watch the surface of the table re-form. Why it was worse than watching an actual mirror do it, Kaylin wasn’t certain. “Why is the table a mirror?”
Sanabalis lifted his hand. “Almost any surface can be used, in theory. In practice, some surfaces dampen magic. They don’t conduct it well. The table, or more particularly, the wood out of which it is constructed, would be considered one such surface.
“It therefore requires a great deal more power to initialize the contact between the table’s surface and the whole of Imperial Records. It takes more power, in theory, to maintain that connection. It does not, however,” he added, casting a glance toward the Arkon as if it were a protective charm, “destroy the table.”
“The table is the Arkon’s?”
“It is a very old table. If you look at the legs, you will find—”
“I would prefer,” the Arkon broke in, in a chilly voice, “that she not make the attempt. I would, in fact, insist that she not touch the mirror at all.”
Kaylin lifted her hands. “Not touching,” she told the Arkon.
This didn’t improve his mood much.
“The table is taken from the wood of the West March,” Sanabalis told her. “Some of the trees there are highly prized for their magical properties. They are also zealously guarded.”
“Which is why you weren’t speaking Dragon.”
“Indeed. There are some things that we can do, and some things we can’t. The wood itself resists much.” He passed a palm over the table, and then said, again in High Barrani, “Map.”
The image shifted into a very familiar-looking map; she’d last seen it in the office. The more elegant lines of the much larger city that Sanabalis had roared into being across a bank of windows were gone. The central image now displayed showed the two concentric circles that neatly enclosed one section of the city; all of the streets external to the outer circle were in pale gray lines.
“Sergeant Kassan said that the preliminary boundaries—and the conjectured extrapolation—were due to your efforts.” He glanced up at her. “For this reason, we will overlook the hour of your arrival. I did, however, speak with Master Sabrai, and he was under the impression that you had information to report.”
She nodded, frowning. “You spoke about a magical-potential leak,” she said, looking at the streets contained by the inner circle.
“I did.”
“Is it significant that it fades out in this pattern? The Palace, here—” she let her finger hover over the streets that surrounded the Palace without actually touching them “—and the Halls, here, are almost at the edge of the circle. But Elani—where we first noticed the incidents—is almost directly at its center.
“Is that position significant? Does your leak, or any leak of this nature, grow weaker as you move away from its core?” Her frown deepened. “And is it just me, or does it look awfully close to Evanton’s shop?”
Sanabalis nodded, as if this were a classroom and she had just done well on the first of a series of grueling questions. “Our direct experience—”
“Your direct experience,” the Arkon interjected.
“—is very limited. The difficulties in the Palace to date have been confined to irregularities in Records. And one difficulty elsewhere, which was not disastrous and cannot be spoken about. The only known difficulty the Halls of Law have experienced appears to involve a window.”
“A talking bloody window that gets offended by ‘curse’ words.”
“That was not how it was described. I believe your explanation is more concise.”
“The rain hit everyone.”
“It did. I have taken the liberty of sending out a small team of Imperial mages. They are in Elani now.”
“What are they looking for?”
“The source of the leak,” he replied.
“Why mages? If magic is amplified in a bad way—”
“Mages have a much more rigid intellectual structure for thinking about the use of magic. Without solid control and concentration, they cannot use it. With solid control and concentration, and with an awareness of the potential growth, they can confine what they do use to the correct parameters. I believe that mages—not Arcanists—will have more luck at avoiding careless invocation or unusual wish fulfillment than the under-educated.”
“Meaning people like me.”
He didn’t bother to answer. “What occurred at the Oracular Halls?”
“I was taken to see Everly,” she replied. “He was stretching canvas. It was not a small one.”
“I…see.”
“I’ll check in again tomorrow or the day after, depending on what Marcus has me doing.”
“Private Neya,” the Arkon said quietly. Very quietly. But he was the Arkon; it carried anyway.
She gave him her immediate—and respectful—attention. “Arkon.”
“When you visit Everly, take Lord Sanabalis with you.”
Sanabalis bowed, and held that bow while the Arkon swept out of the room. He then rose. “At times like this,” he told Kaylin, with a grimace, “I miss the presence of Lord Tiamaris. The Arkon, like many of the eldest and wisest of any race, has a store of impatience he reserves for the young, and if it is spent on the young, it is exhausted.”
“And you’re now young?”
“Compared to the rest of the Dragon Court, no. Compared to the Arkon, yes. I will meet you in the morning—first thing in the morning—at the Halls of Law.”
“When do you think the mages of the Imperium will make their report?”
“As soon as they either have definitive information, or one of them manages to commit suicide in a remarkable and unusual fashion.”
It was late enough that Kaylin decided to go straight home, because first thing in the morning by Dragon definition skirted the edge of dawn. Probably from the wrong side. The streets between the Palace and her apartment were decidedly empty for this time of night; it reminded her of living in the fiefs, although there were no Ferals. The rain had gone on for