Seraphina(6)

Saints in Heaven. He was going to freeze himself, and here were Goredd’s finest just letting him do it. I snatched the cloth and canteen from his unresisting hands, wet the cloth, and demonstrated how he was to dab at his face. He took over the dabbing and I backed away. Prince Lucian nodded cordially in thanks.

“You’re rather transparently new, saar,” said the prince. “What’s your name?”

“Basind.”

It sounded more like a belch than a name. I caught the inevitable look of pity and disgust in the prince’s dark eyes. “How did this begin?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” said Basind. “I was walking home from the fish market—”

“Someone as new as yourself should not be walking around on your own,” snapped the prince. “Surely the embassy has made that abundantly clear to you?”

I looked at Basind, finally taking stock of his clothing: doublet, trunk hose, and the telltale insignia.

“Were you lost?” probed Prince Lucian. Basind shrugged. The prince spoke more gently: “They followed you?”

“I do not know. I was cogitating upon preparations for river plaice.” He flapped a soggy parcel in the prince’s face. “They surrounded me.”

Prince Lucian dodged the fishy packet, undeterred from questioning. “How many were there?”

“Two hundred nineteen, although there may have been some I couldn’t see.”

The prince’s mouth fell open. He was unused to interrogating dragons, evidently. I decided to bail him out. “How many with black feathers in their caps, saar Basind?”

“Six,” said Basind, blinking like someone unused to having only two eyelids.

“Did you get a look at them, Seraphina?” asked the prince, clearly relieved that I’d stepped in.

I nodded dumbly, a light panic seizing me at the prince’s speaking my name. I was a palace nobody; why would he know it?

He continued addressing me: “I’ll have my boys bring round whomever they’ve nabbed. You, the newskin, and your friend there”—he indicated Orma—“should look them over and see if you can describe the ones we’ve missed.”

The prince signaled his men to bring forth their captives, then leaned in and answered the question I hadn’t asked. “Cousin Glisselda has been talking about you nonstop. She was ready to give up music. It’s fortunate you came to us when you did.”

“Viridius was too hard on her,” I muttered, embarrassed.

He flicked his dark eyes toward Orma, who had turned away and was scanning the distance for embassy saarantrai. “What’s your tall friend’s name? He’s a dragon, isn’t he?”

This prince was too sharp for my comfort. “What makes you think so?”

“Just a hunch. I’m right, then?”

I’d gone sweaty, despite the cold. “His name is Orma. He’s my teacher.”

Lucian Kiggs scrutinized my face. “Fair enough. I’ll want to see his exemption papers. I’ve only just inherited the list; I don’t know all our stealth scholars, as Uncle Rufus used to call them.” His dark eyes grew distant, but he recovered himself. “Orma has hailed the embassy, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“Bah. Then we’d best get this over with before I have to go on the defensive.”

One of his men paraded the captives in front of us; they’d only caught two. I’d have thought the ones who jumped into the river would have been easily identified when they came out soaking wet and shivering, but maybe the Guard hadn’t realized …

“Two of them leaped the bridge railing, but I only heard one splash,” I began.

Prince Lucian apprehended my meaning immediately. With four swift hand gestures, he directed his soldiers to both sides of the bridge. On a silent count of three, they swung themselves underneath the bridge, and sure enough, one of the Sons was still there, clinging to the beams. They flushed him out like a partridge; unlike a partridge, he couldn’t fly even a little. He splashed down in the river, two of the Guard leaping in after him.

The prince cast me an appraising look. “You’re observant.”

“Sometimes,” I said, avoiding his eye.

“Captain Kiggs,” intoned a low female voice behind me.

“Here we go,” he muttered, stepping around me. I turned to see a saarantras with short black hair leap down from a horse. She rode like a man in trousers and a split caftan, a silver bell as large as an apple fastened ostentatiously to her cloak clasp. The three saarantrai behind her did not dismount, but kept their eager steeds at the ready; their bells jingled a disconcertingly merry cadence on the wind.

“Undersecretary Eskar.” The prince approached her with an outstretched hand. She did not deign to take it, but strode purposefully toward Basind.

“Report,” she said.

Basind saluted saar fashion, gesturing at the sky. “All in ard. The Guard arrived with tolerable haste, Undersecretary. Captain Kiggs has come directly from his uncle’s graveside.”

“The cathedral is a two-minute walk from here,” said Eskar. “The time differential between your signal and the second one is almost thirteen minutes. If the Guard had been here at that point, the second would not have been necessary at all.”