Seraphina(5)

He looked puzzled. “I have no intention of telling you.”

I inhaled slowly, trying not to be cross with him. At that very moment a commotion broke out on Cathedral Bridge. I looked toward the shouting, and my stomach dropped: six thugs with black feathers in their caps—Sons of St. Ogdo—had formed a semicircle around some poor fellow to one side of the bridge. People streamed toward the noise from all directions.

“Let’s go back inside until this blows over,” I said, grabbing for Orma’s sleeve a second too late. He’d noticed what was happening and was rapidly descending the steps toward the mob.

The fellow pinned against the bridge railings was a dragon. I’d discerned the silver glint of his bell all the way from the steps of the cathedral. Orma shouldered his way through the crowd. I tried to stay close, but someone shoved me and I stumbled into open space at the front of the throng, where the Sons of St. Ogdo brandished truncheons at the cringing saarantras. They recited from St. Ogdo’s Malediction Against the Beast: “ ‘Cursed be thine eyes, worm! Cursed be thy hands, thy heart, thy issue unto the end of days! All Saints curse thee, Eye of Heaven curse thee, thine every serpentine thought turn back upon thee as a curse!’ ”

I pitied the dragon now that I saw his face. He was a raw newskin, scrawny and badly groomed, all awkward angles and unfocused eyes. A goose egg, puffy and gray, swelled along his sallow cheekbone.

The crowd howled at my back, a wolf ready to gnaw whatever bloody bones the Sons might throw. Two of the Sons had drawn knives, and a third had pulled a length of chain out of his leather jerkin. He twitched it menacingly behind him, like a tail; it clattered against the paving stones of the bridge.

Orma maneuvered into the saarantras’s line of sight and gestured at his earrings to remind his fellow what to do. The newskin made no move. Orma reached for one of his own and activated it.

Dragons’ earrings were wondrous devices, capable of seeing, hearing, and speaking across distances. A saarantras could call for help, or could be monitored by his superiors. Orma had once taken his earrings apart to show me; they were machines, but most humans believed them to be something far more diabolical.

“Did you bite Prince Rufus’s head off, worm?” cried one of the Sons, a muscled riverman. He grabbed the newskin’s twiggy arm as if he might break it.

The saarantras squirmed in his ill-fitting clothes, and the Sons recoiled as if wings, horns, and tail might burst out of his skin at any moment. “The treaty forbids us biting off human heads,” said the newskin, his voice like a rusty hinge. “But I won’t pretend I’ve forgotten what they taste like.”

The Sons would have been happy with any pretext for beating him up, but the one he’d handed them was so horrifying that they stood paralyzed for a heartbeat.

Then with a feral roar, the mob came alive. The Sons charged the newskin, slamming him back against the railing. I glimpsed a gash across his forehead, a wash of silver blood down the side of his face, before the crowd closed ranks around me, cutting off my view.

I pushed through, chasing Orma’s shrubby dark hair and beaky nose. All it would take for the mob to turn on him was a gashed lip and a glimpse of his silver blood. I shouted his name, screamed it, but he could not hear me above the commotion.

Shrieks arose from the direction of the cathedral; galloping hooves rang out across the plaza. The Guard had arrived at last, bagpipes brawling. The Sons of St. Ogdo flung their hats into the air and disappeared into the crowd. Two threw themselves over the bridge railing, but I only heard one splash in the river.

Orma was squatting beside the crumpled newskin; I rushed toward him against the current of fleeing townspeople. I dared not embrace him, but my relief was so great that I knelt and took his hand. “Thank Allsaints!”

Orma shook me off. “Help me raise him, Seraphina.”

I scrambled to the other side and took the newskin’s arm. He gaped at me stupidly; his head lolled onto my shoulder, smearing my cloak with his silver blood. I swallowed my revulsion. We hauled the injured saar to his feet and balanced him upright. He shrugged off our help and stood on his own, teetering in the biting breeze.

The Captain of the Guard, Prince Lucian Kiggs, stalked toward us. People parted before him like the waves before St. Fionnuala. He was still in his funeral weeds, a short white houppelande with long dagged sleeves, but all his sorrow had been replaced by a spectacular annoyance.

I tugged Orma’s sleeve. “Let’s go.”

“I can’t. The embassy will fix on my earring. I must stay close to the newskin.”

I’d glimpsed the bastard prince across crowded halls at court. He had a reputation as a shrewd and dogged investigator; he worked all the time and was not as outgoing as his uncle Rufus had been. He was also not as handsome—no beard, alas—but seeing him up close, I realized that the intelligence of his gaze more than made up for that.

I looked away. Saints’ dogs, there was dragon blood all over my shoulder.

Prince Lucian ignored Orma and me and addressed the newskin, his brows drawn in concern. “You’re bleeding!”

The newskin raised his face for inspection. “It looks worse than it is, Your Grace. These human heads contain a great many blood vessels, easily perforated by—”

“Yes, yes.” The prince winced at the newskin’s gash and signaled to one of his men, who rushed up with a cloth and a canteen of water. The newskin opened the canteen and began pouring the water straight onto his head. It trickled down his scalp in ineffectual rivulets, soaking his doublet.