Seraphina(36)

The Countdown Clock was visible all the way across the cathedral square. Apparently it changed numbers midmorning, about the time Comonot would be arriving. I appreciated that kind of pedantry, and stopped to watch the mechanical figures emerge from little doors in its face. A bright green dragon and a purple-clad queen stepped forward, bowed, took turns chasing each other, and then hoisted a drapery between them, which I assumed represented the treaty. There was a grinding and clunking sound, and the massive clock hand pointed toward three.

Three days. I wondered whether the Sons of St. Ogdo felt pressed for time. Was it difficult to organize rioting? Did they have enough torches and black feathers? Enough rabid speechifiers?

I turned back toward St. Gobnait’s cathedral, feeling some curiosity about Viridius’s protégé. He had certainly made an interesting clock.

I felt the megaharmonium before I heard it, through the soles of my feet, through the very street, experiencing it not as sound but as vibration and a peculiar oppressive weight of air. Closer to the cathedral, I understood a sound was present but would have been hard-pressed to identify it. I stood in the north transept porch, my hand upon a pillar, and I felt the megaharmonium to the center of my bones.

It was loud. I did not yet feel qualified to offer a more nuanced opinion.

I opened the door into the north transept; the music nearly blasted me back out again. The entire cathedral was packed with sound, every cranny, as if sound were some solid mass, leaving no air, no medium to move through. I could not enter until my ears adjusted, which they did surprisingly quickly.

Once I had ceased to be terrified, I was awed. My paltry flute had made the building ring, but that thin sound had risen like candle smoke; this was a conflagration.

I worked my way toward the Golden House at the great crossing, wading through sound, then pressed on into the south transept. I saw now that the instrument had four manual keyboards, gleaming like rows of teeth, and a larger one for the feet. Above, around, and behind it, pipes had been fitted in neat rows, making a palisade fortress of chanters; it looked like the unnatural offspring of a bagpipe and a … a dragon.

A large man in black dominated the bench, his feet dancing a ground-bass jig, his broad shoulders affording him a reach like a Zibou rock ape. I wasn’t short but I could not have reached in so many directions at once without straining something.

There was no music on the stand; surely no music had yet been written for this monstrosity. Was this cacophony his own composition? I suspected it was. It was brilliant, the way a thunderstorm across the moors or a raging torrent is brilliant, insofar as a force of nature may be said to have genius.

I was judging too hastily. I began to hear structure in the piece, the longer I listened. The volume and intensity had distracted me from the melody itself, a fragile thing, almost shy. The surrounding bombast was all a bluff.

He released the last chord like a boulder off a trebuchet. A bevy of monks who’d been hiding in nearby chapels like timid mice scurried out and accosted the performer in whispers: “Very nice. Glad it works. That’s enough testing; we’re about to have service.”

“I couldt play durink service, yes?” said the big man in a dense Samsamese accent. His head, close-cropped and blond, bobbed submissively.

“No. No. No.” The negative echoed all over the transept. The big man’s shoulders slumped; even from the back, he looked heartbroken. A pang of pity surprised me.

Surely this was Viridius’s golden boy, Lars. He had designed an impressive machine, taking up an entire chapel with its pipes and tubes and bellows. I wondered which Saint had been evicted to make room for it.

I should greet him. I felt I’d glimpsed his humanity, a piece of his heart in his playing. We were friends; he just didn’t know it yet. I stepped up and gently cleared my throat. He turned to look at me.

His middling chin, round cheeks, and gray eyes shocked me speechless. It was Loud Lad, who piped and yodeled and built pergolas in the garden of my mind.





“Hello,” I said calmly, my pulse racing in excitement and plain terror. Would all my grotesques, the entire freakish diaspora of half-dragons, walk into my life one by one? Would I spot Gargoyella busking on a street corner and Finch in the palace kitchens, turning the spits? Maybe I wouldn’t have to go looking for them after all.

Loud Lad gave courtesy with Samsamese simplicity, and said, “We hev not been introduced, grausleine.”

I shook his enormous hand. “I’m Seraphina, Viridius’s new assistant.”

He nodded eagerly. “I know. I am calledt Lurse.”

Lars. He spoke Goreddi like his mouth was full of pebbles.

He rose from his bench; he was taller than Orma, and as massive as two and a half Ormas, at least. He seemed simultaneously strong and soft, as if he had ended up with a lot of muscles rather by accident and didn’t care about keeping them. He had a nose like a compass needle; it pointed with purpose. He pointed it toward the quire, where the monks had begun cheerful hymns to St. Gobnait and her blessed bees. “They are havink service. Perheps we can …” He gestured past the Golden House, toward the north transept. I followed him out, into the hazy glare of afternoon.

We walked to the Wolfstoot Bridge, a shy silence hanging over us. “Would you like lunch?” I said, gesturing toward the clustered food carts. He said nothing, but stepped up eagerly. I bought us pies and ale; we carried them to the bridge’s balustrade.