Cast in Flame Read Online Free PDF

he said, matching tone of voice to expression. “Come in. I put tea on ten minutes ago.”
    * * *
    Evanton didn’t actually drink tea. He made it for guests. Given his current mood, those guests might as well have been tax collectors. Bellusdeo entered his store, her eyes rounding. If she’d been mortal, Kaylin would have assumed she was surprised at the clutter and the occasional moving cobweb. She wasn’t. She turned to Evanton, in his apron, his jeweler’s glass hanging on the edge of a tarnished silver chain, his white hair in wisps above the crown of his head.
    And she bowed.
    This seemed to mollify the old man. “You must be Bellusdeo,” he said. “Rise, Lady. While I have a home here, you will always be a welcome, and valued, guest.” His voice was deeper than usual, and to Kaylin’s ear, stronger; it rumbled as if he were almost a Dragon. “I do not know who named you, or from whence they took the name, but it is yours in its entirety. I am honored.”
    Kaylin remembered, belatedly, to close her mouth. She stared at Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo’s eyes were a luminous gold, and her lips were turned up in a gentle, almost reverent smile. “You have the advantage of me in many ways,” she said.
    “Ah, forgive me.” He turned a far less reverent gaze on Kaylin. “Private, introduce us.”
    “Sorry. Bellusdeo, this is a friend of mine. He’s called Evanton, around these parts; if he has a family name, he’s never shared. The young man hiding in the kitchen is Grethan, his apprentice.”
    Bellusdeo frowned.
    “Kaylin is, like the rest of the inhabitants of Elantra, very informal,” Evanton said. He was, however, smiling in his slightly pained way.
    “And you allow this?”
    “Lady, she has twice saved my garden. In ignorance, she’s borne the responsibility that has been the entirety of my adult life. She has never demanded reward greater than tea and snacks—and if I am to be honest, she doesn’t so much demand as help herself if I am slow. I am willing to accept informality from her; formality would be so unnatural the awkwardness would likely kill one of us.”
    “Kaylin, do you understand who Evanton is ?” Bellusdeo demanded.
    “Yes. He’s the Keeper.”
    “And do you understand what that means?”
    “He—he stops the elements from destroying each other. And incidentally the rest of us, although I don’t think they’d notice that as much.” She hesitated and then said, “How did you know what he is if you didn’t recognize who he is?”
    Bellusdeo now turned to Teela. “Have you never explained?”
    “Teela brought me here, the first time. When I wanted practical enchantments.”
    Evanton winced.
    “Practical?”
    “My daggers don’t make a sound when I draw them.”
    The Dragon looked scandalized.
    Evanton looked even more pained. “We all, as Kaylin likes to say, need to eat.”
    “I should have expected no better from an Empire that so denigrates the Chosen.” Bellusdeo’s eyes were now a deeper than comfortable orange.
    “I am content, Lady,” Evanton said, voice grave. “If the current Empire does not treat me with the regard or respect you now offer, it is a far less lonely place than it once was. Grethan,” he added, his voice developing the gruffness and irritability of age. “You are being rude to a guest.”
    Grethan’s stalks appeared from the left side of the door frame; they were followed, slowly, by the rest of his face. He didn’t look comfortable. He was Tha’alani by birth, but although he had the characteristic racial stalks protruding from his forehead, they were decorative. He couldn’t join the Tha’alaan. He couldn’t speak to his own people the way they spoke among each other unless one of them touched him and entered his thoughts. The deafness had, in the parlance of the Tha’alani, resulted in insanity. In normal human terms, he’d been angry and isolated, and that anger and isolation had almost caused the death of a Tha’alani child.
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