Seraphina(27)

He threw back his head and laughed; he had very white teeth. “Come, Seraphina, you’ve omitted the possibility that he spotted a lovely shepherdess and simply lost his head.” The heavenly host rewarded this comment with a symphony of titters.

I was about to turn away—he knew nothing, clearly—when a familiar baritone chimed in behind me: “Maid Dombegh is right. It’s likely the Sons did it.”

I stepped a little aside, letting Prince Lucian face Josef unimpeded.

Josef’s smile thinned. Prince Lucian hadn’t acknowledged the disrespectful innuendo about his uncle Rufus, but he’d surely heard every word. The earl gave exaggerated courtesy. “Begging your pardon, Prince, but why do you not round up the Sons and lock them away, if you’re so sure they did it?”

“We’ll arrest no one without proof,” said the prince, seeming unconcerned. His left boot gave three rapid taps; I noticed and wondered whether I had such unconscious tics. The prince continued, his tone still light: “Unfounded arrests would give the Sons more fodder and bring new ones out of the woodwork. Besides, it’s wrong in principle. ‘Let the one who seeks justice be just.’ ”

I looked over at him then, because I recognized that quote. “Pontheus?”

“The same.” Prince Lucian nodded approvingly.

Josef sneered. “With all due respect, the Regent of Samsam would never permit a mad Porphyrian philosopher to guide his decisions. Nor would he permit dragons to make a state visit to Samsam—no offense to your Queen, of course.”

“Perhaps that is why the Regent of Samsam was not the architect of peace,” said the prince, voice calm, foot tapping. “Apparently he has no qualms about receiving the benefits of our mad-Porphyrian-inspired treaty without having to shoulder any of the risks himself. He’ll be here for this state visit, more’s the headache for me—and I mean that with all the love and respect in the world.”

As fascinating as this polite, courtly aggression was, suddenly Miss Fusspots arrested my gaze from across the adjoining room. She accepted a glass of tawny port from a page boy. I could not get to her without ducking through the dancing, and they’d just started a volta, so there was a great number of flying limbs. I stayed where I was, but did not take my eye off her.

A trumpet flare brought the exuberant dance to an inelegant halt; the band choked off abruptly, and there were several collisions on the dance floor. I did not take my eyes off Miss Fusspots to see what all the bother was, which resulted in my standing all alone in the wide path that had once again opened up.

Prince Lucian grabbed my arm—my right—and hauled me out of the way.

Queen Lavonda herself stood in the doorway. Her face was creased with age but her back was unbent; she had a spine of steel, they said, and her posture confirmed it. She still wore white for her son, from her silk slippers to her wimple and embroidered cap. Her sumptuous sleeves trailed the floor.

Glisselda sprang up off her couch and curtsied deeply. “Grandmamma! You honor us!”

“I’m not staying, Selda, and I’m not here for myself,” said the Queen. She had the same voice as her granddaughter, but aged and edged with command. “I have brought you some additional guests,” she said, ushering in a group of four saarantrai, Eskar among them. They stood stiffly, as if in military formation. They had not bothered to dress up particularly; their bells were not quite shiny enough to be proper jewelry. Eskar was in Porphyrian trousers again. Everyone stared.

“Oh!” squeaked Glisselda. She curtsied again, trying to recover her composure; her eyes were still large when she rose. “To what do we owe this, um—”

“To a treaty signed nearly forty years ago,” said the Queen, who seemed to grow taller as she addressed the entire room. “I believed, perhaps erroneously, that our peoples would simply grow accustomed to each other, given the cessation of warfare. Are we oil and water, that we cannot mix? Have I been remiss in expecting reason and decency to prevail, when I should have rolled up my sleeves and enforced them?”

The humans in the room looked sheepish; the dragons, discomfited.

“Glisselda, see to your guests!” the Queen snapped, and quit the room.

Glisselda quailed visibly. Beside me, Prince Lucian fidgeted and muttered, “Come on, Selda.” She could not have heard him, but she lifted her chin as if she had, trying to capture her grandmother’s authoritative air. She strode toward Eskar and kissed her on both her cheeks. The little princess had to rise up on her toes to reach. Eskar submitted graciously, inclining her head, and everyone applauded.

Then the soiree resumed, the saarantrai together on one side like a herd of spooked cattle, their bells jingling plaintively, and the other guests milling around them in a wide radius.

I kept my distance, too. Eskar knew me, but I did not care to risk the others smelling me. I wasn’t sure what they would do. I might be taken for a scholar with a bell exemption, or Eskar might tactlessly proclaim my parentage aloud, to be overheard by the whole room.

Surely she wouldn’t. Orma had told me that interbreeding violated ard so egregiously that no dragon would entertain the idea that I was possible, let alone utter it aloud.

“I dare you to ask her to dance,” said a gentleman behind me, snapping me out of my preoccupations. For a moment I thought he meant me.

“Which one?” intoned the omnipresent Earl of Apsig.