Seraphina(39)

“Find Earl Josef. I’ll speak to him about this. He can’t go knocking people into the river and riding off,” said Prince Lucian, waving a dismissal. His deputies departed.

The sun was beginning to set and the breeze along the river had picked up. The prince faced my shivering friend. Lars was older and a head taller, but Prince Lucian stood like he was Captain of the Queen’s Guard. Lars looked like a little boy who wanted to sink into his boots. I was amazed at how far he succeeded.

The prince spoke, his voice unexpectedly gentle: “You’re Viridius’s protégé.”

“Yes,” said Lars, mumbling as a man must who’s sunk into his footwear.

“Did you provoke the earl in some way?”

Lars shrugged and said, “I was raisedt on his estate.”

“That’s hardly a provocation, is it?” asked Prince Lucian. “Are you his serf?”

Lars hesitated. “I hev spendt more than a year and a day away from his landts. I am legally free.”

A question took root in my mind: if Lars had grown up on his estate, might Josef know Lars was half dragon? It seemed plausible, and Josef’s hostility made sense in light of his attitudes toward dragonkind. Alas, I could not ask in front of Lucian Kiggs.

Prince Lucian looked disgusted. “Maybe a man can harass his former serfs in Samsam, but that is not how we conduct ourselves here. I will speak with him.”

“I’dt rather you didt not,” said Lars. Prince Lucian opened his mouth to protest, but Lars cut him off. “I can go, yes?”

The prince waved him along. Lars returned my pencil, slightly soggy, and held my gaze for a moment before he turned to go. I wished I could have embraced him, but I felt a peculiar reluctance to do so in front of the prince. We shared a secret, Lars and I, even if Lars didn’t know it yet.

He climbed the stone steps up the Wolfstoot Bridge without a word. His broad shoulders sagged, as if under the burden of whole worlds we could not see.





“But of course I might say anything, because you are quite far away just now,” said Prince Lucian, who had apparently been speaking to me for some time.

“Sorry.” I tore my eyes away from Lars and gave the prince full courtesy.

“We can dispense with some formality,” he said when I rose, his eyebrows raised in plain amusement. He put a hand to his crimson doublet, right over his heart, and said earnestly, “Right now I’m merely Captain of the Guard. Half courtesy is adequate, and you may call me Captain Kiggs—or simply Kiggs, if you will. Everyone else does.”

“Princess Glisselda calls you Lucian,” I said breezily, covering my fluster.

He gave a short laugh. “Selda’s an exception to everything, as you may have noticed. My own grandmother calls me Kiggs. Would you gainsay the Queen?”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said, trying to echo his levity. “Not about something this important.”

“I should think not.” He gestured grandly toward the steps up the bridge. “If you’ve no objection, let us walk while we talk; I have to get back to Castle Orison.”

I followed, unsure what he wished to speak with me about, but recalling that Orma had given me a task. I put a hand to the purse at my waist, but the little lizard figurine made me anxious, as if it might pop its head out without permission.

How would this prince react if he saw it? Perhaps I could just tell him the story.

A guildsman of the town watch stood on the balustrade as Lars had done, lighting lamps in anticipation of sunset; laughing merchants dismantled their stalls. Prince—Kiggs strolled through the thinning market crowd, perfectly at ease among them, as if he were simply another townsman. I started up the gently sloping Royal Road, but he gestured toward a narrow street, the more direct route. The road, not wide to begin with, narrowed even further above us; the upper stories cantilevered over the street, as if the houses were leaning together to gossip. A woman on one side might have borrowed a lump of butter from her neighbor on the other without leaving home. The looming buildings squeezed the sky down to a rapidly darkening ribbon.

When the noise of the marketplace had faded and only the sound of his boots echoed up the street, Lucian Kiggs said, “I wanted to thank you for your intervention with the saarantrai the other evening.”

It took me a moment to remember what he was talking about. Dame Okra beating me with a book had rather eclipsed the other events of that day.

He continued: “No one else dared speak so plainly to Selda—not even I. I suffered the same paralysis she did, as if the problem might solve itself if we all refused to acknowledge it. But of course, Selda says you know a great deal about dragons. It seems she was right.”

“You’re very kind to say so,” I said evenly, giving no hint of the anxious knot his words produced in my chest. I did not like him associating me with dragons. He was too sharp.

“It raises questions, of course,” he said, as if he’d read my mind. “Selda said your knowledge comes from reading the treaty with your father. Maybe some of it does, but surely not all. Your comfort with saarantrai—your ability to talk to them without breaking out in a cold sweat—that’s not something one gains from studying the treaty. I’ve read the treaty; it makes you wary of them, rather, because it’s as full of holes as a Ducanahan cheese.”