Seraphina(55)

I sat for some moments, my thoughts in a tangle. I’d accepted an invitation to dance. I couldn’t dance, by anyone’s definition. Beyond that, I had no business dancing with a prince of any kind, even one who appeared to forget the differences in our social standing and who seemed, inexplicably, to find me a plausible person to confide in.

I leaned my forehead upon the cool stone balustrade. He thought I was normal, and that made me feel normal, and that was just cruel. I could have dispelled his illusions in an instant by pulling up my sleeve. Why live in fear that he might find me disgusting someday, when I could make it happen right now? I worked my right hand under the bindings of my left sleeve, feeling the cold plates, the sharp scalloped edges, my bodily horrors, and hating it.

Why had that memory sprung out at me so unexpectedly? Was it another “mind-pearl,” like the one Orma had triggered by revealing his natural form? Were there more? Was my head full of tinder, just waiting for a spark?

I stood up shakily, and my mother’s words came back to me: I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken. I chafed at her arrogance, and her good fortune. “The thing is, Mother, you weren’t broken,” I muttered, as if she were standing right next to me. “I am. And it was you who made me this way.”

Inside my head, the box twitched like a thing alive.





I returned to my room for a nap, making sure to wake in plenty of time to change into my formal houppelande. It was maroon, embroidered with black; I added a respectful white sash for Prince Rufus. I attempted to do my hair nicely, because Glisselda’s comments had made me insecure; I redid it multiple times to no satisfactory result. I finally left it loose in sheer frustration and put on nice earrings as an apology to anyone who cared. I didn’t own much other jewelry except the earring Orma had given me. I considered hooking it into my hair—it would make an interesting ornament, and no human would recognize it—but a saarantras might discern that it was quigutl-made. I left it in my room.

We’d been preparing this welcoming concert for more than a month, but the sheer scale of the spectacle still astonished me. Maybe everything looks more impressive in the light of hundreds of candles, or an appreciative audience lends a performance a certain glamour, I don’t know, but some magic in the air made everything go well. No one was late or out of order; no one fell off the stage; if anyone played a wrong note, they played with such conviction that it sounded right.

That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art—and I do—then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.

The Ardmagar sat front and center for the stage performances, bright-eyed and keen. I watched him from behind the curtain during Guntard’s shawm solo, trying to reconcile the look on Comonot’s face with his lecture at High Nest. For someone so convinced of the toxicity of human emotion, he certainly appeared to enjoy himself.

Glisselda sat by Comonot playing the ornament; her mother sat on his other side. I saw the Queen, Dame Okra, and Viridius, but no Kiggs until I looked further afield. He stalked the back of the hall checking in with the guards, one eye on the performance and one on security. It was a stressful job, to gauge by his expression.

I had not put myself on the program. I divided my time between reminding the next performers to ready themselves and listening from the wings of the stage.

During the sackbut quartet, I noticed nobody was waiting to come on. I glanced at my schedule: Lars was up next. He was to play the binou, a smaller, milder type of bagpipe. My heart sank; I hadn’t so much as glimpsed Lars today. I marched up the hallway, poking my nose behind the curtains of the closets we had commandeered for dressing rooms.

Honestly, I had anticipated the rooms being used for warming up and not for the actual changing of clothes. I made one of my lute players scream as if he’d found a quig in his bed.

Further down the hall, I heard tense voices from behind the last curtain. I approached cautiously, not caring to walk in on anyone again, and recognized one voice as Lars’s. I raised a hand toward the curtain, but hesitated. Lars sounded angry, and he was speaking Samsamese. I drew closer, listening hard and letting my ear adjust. My Samsamese was rusty, and it had never been completely fluent.

The second voice was, unsurprisingly, the Earl of Apsig’s. I understood “You’re following me!” but not the rest.

Lars denied it vehemently: “Never!” Then “I am here …,” something unintelligible, “for the machine and the flute music.” Ah, right. He’d heard me from afar.

Josef swore a lot, followed by “the flute of madness,” which struck me as an amusing phrase. Josef’s boots clomped as he paced; his voice turned pleading. “No one must learn what you are!”

“And you?” said Lars. “What will you do if they learn what you are?”

Josef barked something I didn’t understand, and then came a thud and a crash. I whipped the curtain aside. The earl stood with his back to me; Lars was sprawled on the floor among the instrument cases. At the sound of the curtain opening, Earl Josef spun and slammed me into the wall. We stood frozen that way for a moment: Josef pinning me to the wall, breathing hard; me struggling to regain the breath he’d knocked out of me.