Seraphina(114)



Apparently the council had been short. We were about to hear the official results.

A balcony halfway up the wall was opened up to both the hall and the courtyard, such that someone with a loud voice could be heard in both places. Glisselda appeared there, waving to the roaring throng. She acted on her grandmother’s behalf, but everyone who saw her that day, clad in white for her mother, her golden hair shining like any crown, knew they were in the presence of the next Queen. She awed us into silence.

She handed a folded letter to a herald, a particularly vociferous fellow, whose voice rang out clearly over the hushed crowd.

Generals of the Tanamoot:





Goredd rejects the legitimacy of your claim to sovereignty over the Dragon Lands. Ardmagar Comonot yet lives; petty threats will not induce us to turn him over, nor do we recognize the validity of these trumped-up charges against him. He is our proven friend and ally, author and champion of the peace, and the legitimate ruler of the Tanamoot.



If you push this toward war, do not foolishly imagine we are helpless, or that your own people will choose to fight for you rather than for continued cooperation between our species. This peace has been a true blessing upon the world, which is changed for the better; you cannot drag it back into the past.



Devoutly hoping we may settle this with words, I am,

Her Highness Princess Glisselda, First Heir of Goredd,

On behalf of Her Majesty Queen Lavonda the Magnificent

We applauded with heavy hearts, knowing that this was all the pretext the generals would need for war. Another conflict was coming, whether we willed it or not. I saw smirks on faces in the crowd and feared that some among us willed it in fact.

It took forever for the crowd to disperse; everyone wanted a chance to petition the princess or the Ardmagar, swear loyalty, argue. The palace guard managed the crowds as best they could, but I did not see Kiggs anywhere. It wasn’t like him not to be right in the thick of things.

Princess Glisselda had also contrived to disappear. I suspected Kiggs might be with her. There were two places outside the royal wing where someone like me could look. I had just set foot upon the grand stair, however, when a voice behind me stopped me short: “Tell me it isn’t true, Seraphina. Tell me they’re lying about you.”

I looked back. The Earl of Apsig crossed the atrium toward me, his boots echoing upon the marble floor. I didn’t ask what he meant. Ninys and Samsam had spread the news to every corner of the court. I gripped the balustrade tightly, bracing myself. “It’s no lie,” I said. “I am half dragon—like Lars.”

He neither flinched nor rushed up to hit me—as I’d half feared he would. His face went slack with despair; he flopped himself onto the broad stone steps and sat with his head in his hands. For a moment I considered sitting beside him—he looked so sad!—but he was too unpredictable.

“What are we to do?” he said at last, throwing up his hands and looking up with red-rimmed eyes. “They’ve won. Nowhere is exclusively human; no side in this conflict is ours alone. They infiltrate everything, control everything! I joined the Sons of St. Ogdo because they seemed to be the only people willing to take action, the only ones looking the treaty in the eye and calling it what it was: our ruin.”

He ran his hands through his hair, as if he might pull it out by the roots. “But who connected me with the Sons and urged me to get involved? That dragon, Lady Corongi.”

“They’re not all out to get us,” I said softly.

“No? How about the one that tricked your father, or the one that deceived my mother and made her bear a bastard?”

I drew a sharp breath, and he glowered at me. “My mother raised Lars as if he were my equal. One day he began sprouting scales out of his very flesh. He was only seven; he showed us all, innocently rolled up his sleeve—” His voice broke; he coughed. “My father stabbed her right through the neck. It was his right, his injured honor. He might have killed Lars, too.”

He stared at the air as if disinclined to speak further. “You didn’t let him,” I prompted. “You persuaded him otherwise.”

He looked at me as if I were speaking Mootya. “Persuaded? No. I killed the old man. Pushed him off the round tower.” He smiled mirthlessly at my shock. “We live in the remotest highlands. This sort of thing happens all the time. I took my great-grandmother’s family name to avoid awkward questions if I went to court in Blystane. Highland genealogies are complex; none of the coastal Samsamese keep track of them.”

So that’s what he was: not a dragon, but a parricide who’d changed his name. “What about Lars?”

“I told him I would kill him if I saw him again, and then I set him loose in the hills. I had no idea where he went until he popped up here, an avenging ghost sent to haunt me.”

He glared at me sullenly, hating me for knowing too much, never mind that he himself had told me. I cleared my throat. “What will you do now?”

He rose, straightened the hem of his black doublet, and gave mocking courtesy. “I am returning to Samsam. I will make the Regent see sense.”

His tone chilled me. “What kind of sense?”

“The only kind there is. The kind that puts humans first over animals.”

With those words he stalked away across the atrium. He seemed to take all the air with him when he left.

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