Seraphina(64)

I put a hand to my heart, to Orma’s earring, although I did not pull it out just yet. Orma would be in so much trouble for transforming and coming to my rescue that I couldn’t afford to call him if I wasn’t completely sure.

The mist was spreading, or its source moved. How much surer did I need to be? It would take time for Orma to get here; he would not be able to fly for several minutes after he transformed, and we were miles away. The wisps moved west, then curled toward the sinkhole. There was no sound in the coppice. I listened hard for the telltale rasp of branches on hide, for footsteps, for the hot rush of breath, but heard nothing.

“Let’s go,” said Kiggs beside me, and I almost fell off my horse.

He swung himself into the saddle; I handed him the reins, noticing a glint of silver in his hand. I couldn’t ask about it just then, however. My heart pounded frantically. The mist curled still closer, and now we were making noise. Whether he was consciously aware of the danger or not, Kiggs spurred his horse forward quietly, and we hurried together back toward the road.

He waited until we had cleared the coppice altogether, emerging into rolling farmland on the other side, to show me what he’d found: two horse medals. “This was Uncle Rufus’s patron, St. Brandoll: the welcomer, kind to strangers,” said Kiggs, trying unsuccessfully to smile. He did not narrate the other medal; he seemed to have run out of words. He held it up, however, and I saw it bore the arms of the royal family: Belondweg and Pau-Henoa, the Goreddi crown, St. Ogdo’s sword and ring.

“Her name was Hilde,” he said when he recovered his voice, a quarter mile down the road. “She was a good horse.”





We pressed on harder after that, ostensibly to make up lost time, an unspoken anxiety hanging over us at how close we might have been. We passed fallow winter fields and brown grazing pastures. Low stone walls crawled up and down the hills. We passed villages—Gorse, Rightturn, Fetter’s Mill, Remy, a few too small to have names. Their attendant manor houses squatted sternly nearby. At Sinkpond we opened my saddle pack and ate lunch as we rode: boiled eggs, cheese, a dense sweet loaf shared between us.

“Listen,” said Kiggs around his bread. “I know it’s none of my business, and I know I said I don’t judge you for it, but I can’t stay silent, not after what we just saw in that ravine. I know you’re of age to decide for yourself—’an autonomous being, unfettered and free, stepping up to the first agon of your heart’—”

Now he was quoting tragedy to me, which couldn’t bode well. “That’s ‘willful, unfettered, and free’—is it not?” I said, trying to deflect dread with pedantry.

He laughed. “Trust me to omit the most important word! I should know better than to quote Necans to you.” His face grew grave again, his gaze painfully earnest. “Forgive me, Phina, but I feel compelled to say, as your friend—”

As my friend? I grabbed my saddle tightly to keep from falling off.

“—that it’s a bad idea, falling in love with a dragon.”

I was glad I had braced myself. “Blue St. Prue,” I cried, “who can you possibly mean?”

He fiddled with his reins. “Your ‘teacher,’ right? The dragon Orma?”

I said nothing, utterly flabbergasted.

“It didn’t add up, to me, that he was merely your teacher,” he said, pulling off a glove and slapping it absently against his horse’s shoulder. “You know him too well, for one thing. You know too much about dragons in general.”

“It wasn’t such a liability in the coppice,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even.

“No, no! It’s never been a liability,” he said, his eyes widening. He reached a hand toward me but held off touching my arm. “I didn’t mean it that way! We now have concrete evidence linking my uncle and a dragon, and that’s all thanks to you. But you’re going to an extraordinary amount of trouble for this Orma. You’re fond of him, protective of him—”

“Fond and protective equals in love?” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.

“You’ve put your hand to your heart,” he said. He wasn’t smiling.

I had unconsciously felt for Orma’s earring. I put my hand back down.

“I have agents, you know.” He sounded defensive now. “They saw you meeting him the other night. They saw you go to Quighole.”

“You’re spying on me?”

He turned rather charmingly red. “Not on you! On him. He claims his father is a threat to the Ardmagar. It seemed prudent to find out more about him and his family.”

I felt light-headed; the horizon wobbled a bit. “And what have you learned?”

His face brightened; we were back to discussing a mystery. “His entire family seems to exist under a cloud of suspicion, but no one will explicitly say what crime was committed. It seems to have been more than just his father, though. If I had to guess, based on the stony silence at the embassy, I’d say—”

“You asked at the embassy?”

“Where would you have asked? Anyway, my guess is madness. You’d be astonished how many ordinary things dragons consider madness. Perhaps his father started telling jokes or his mother found religion or—”

I couldn’t stop myself. “Or his sister fell in love with a human?”