Seraphina(41)

Legacy? Up my arm, around my waist, and scattershot through my head? The hooting memory box, which I feared would burst open at any moment?

“She gave you an ability to touch people’s very souls,” he said kindly. “What is it like to be so talented?”

“What is it like to be a bastard?” I blurted.

I clapped a hand to my mouth, horrified. I had felt the shot coming; I hadn’t realized the bow was loaded with this very quarrel, perfectly calibrated to hit him hardest. What part of me had been studying him, stockpiling knowledge as ammunition?

His open expression slammed shut; suddenly he looked like a stranger, his gaze unfamiliar and cold. He drew himself up in a defensive posture. I staggered back a step as if he’d pushed me.

“What’s it like? It’s like this,” he said, gesturing angrily at the space between us. “Almost all the time.”


Then he was gone, as if the wind had whisked him away. I stood in the courtyard alone, realizing that I had failed to speak with him about Orma. My annoyance at forgetting paled before everything else that was clamoring to be felt, so I clung to it tightly, like a stick of driftwood in a tempestuous sea. Somehow, my aching legs carried me indoors.





I took comfort in the normalcy and routine of my garden that evening. I lingered a long time at the edge of Loud Lad’s ravine, watching him build a tent out of cattails and Pandowdy’s shed skin. Loud Lad, like Miss Fusspots, looked sharper and more detailed now that I had seen him in the real world; his fingers were long and nimble, the curve of his shoulders sad.

Fruit Bat was still the only grotesque who looked back at me. Despite my having asked him to stay in his grove, he came and sat beside me at the edge of the gorge, his skinny brown legs dangling over the edge. I found I didn’t mind. I considered taking his hands, but just thinking about it was overwhelming. I had enough to worry about right now. He wasn’t going anywhere.

“Besides,” I told him, as if we’d been having a conversation, “the way things are going, I have only to wait for you to drop in on me.”

He did not speak, but his eyes gleamed.

The next morning, I dawdled over washing and oiling my scales. I dreaded facing Princess Glisselda’s lesson; surely Kiggs would have spoken to her about me. When I finally arrived at the south solar, however, she wasn’t there. I sat at the harpsichord and played to comfort myself; the timbre of that instrument is, to me, the musical equivalent of a warm bath.

Today it was cold.

A messenger arrived with a message from the princess, canceling the lesson without explanation. I stared at the note a long time, as if the handwriting could tell me anything about her mood, but I wasn’t even sure she’d written it herself.

Was I being punished for insulting her cousin? It seemed likely, and I deserved it, of course. I spent the rest of the day trying not to think about it. I went about my (sulking) duties to Viridius, drilling the symphonia on the (pouting) songs of state, supervising construction of the (glowering) stage in the great hall, finalizing the lineup for the (self-pitying) welcome ceremony, now just two days away. I threw myself (stewing) into work to stave off the (moping) feeling that descended when I stopped.

Evening fell. I made for the north tower and dinner. The quickest route from Viridius’s suite led past the chambers of state: the Queen’s study, the throne room, the council chamber. I always passed quickly; it was the sort of place my father would haunt. This evening, almost as if he’d heard me thinking about him, Papa stepped out of the council chamber and into my path, deep in conversation with the Queen herself.

He saw me—Papa and I have a cat’s-whisker sensitivity to each other—but he pretended he didn’t. I was in no mood for the humiliation of being pointed out to him by the Queen in the belief he hadn’t noticed me, so I ducked down a little side corridor and waited just on the other side of a statue of Queen Belondweg. I was not hidden, exactly, but out of the way enough that I wouldn’t be noticed by anyone who wasn’t looking for me. Other dignitaries streamed out of the council chamber; Dame Okra Carmine, Lady Corongi, and Prince Lucian Kiggs all passed my corridor without looking down it.

A merry voice at my back said, “Who are we spying on?”

I jumped. Princess Glisselda beamed at me. “There’s a secret door out of the council room. I’m evading that withered courgette, Lady Corongi. Has she passed?”

I nodded, shocked to find Princess Glisselda her usual impervious, friendly self. She was practically dancing with delight, her golden curls bouncing around her face. “I’m sorry I had to miss my lesson today, Phina, but we’ve been dreadfully busy. We just had the most exciting council ever, and I looked very clever, largely due to you.”

“That’s … that’s wonderful. What’s happened?”

“Two knights came to the castle today!” She could barely contain herself; her hands fluttered about like two excitable small birds. They lit briefly on my left arm, but I managed not to cringe visibly. “They claim to have spotted a rogue dragon, flying around the countryside in its natural shape! Isn’t that awful?”

Awful enough to have her grinning ear to ear. She was a strange little princess.

I found myself fingering my scaly wrist; I hastily crossed my arms. “Prince Rufus’s head went missing,” I half whispered, thinking out loud.