Seraphina(76)

“But you see, here’s what perplexes me.” She scowled and shook the knotted necklace at me. “You were so helpful and knowledgeable, one would expect Lucian to be singing your praises unto Heaven’s dome. He’s not. I know he arrested you on little pretext. He’s mad at you, evidently, but he won’t say why; he’s shut himself in his beastly tower. How do I mediate if I don’t know what’s going on? I can’t have you two at odds!”

I must have reeled a bit, because Glisselda snapped, “Millie! Make this poor woman some tea!”

Tea helped, although it also seemed to moisten my eyes. “My eyes are watering,” I said, just to clarify to everyone.

“It’s all right,” said Glisselda. “I’d weep too if Lucian were that angry with me.”

I couldn’t work out what to tell her. This had never happened to me before: I always knew which things were tellable and which were not, and while I had not liked lying, it had never felt like such a burden. I tried to remember my rules: simpler was always better. I said, my voice shaky, “He’s angry because I lied to him.”

“Lucian can be touchy about that,” said Glisselda sagely. “Why did you lie?”

I gaped at her as if she’d asked why I drew breath. I couldn’t tell her that lying wasn’t so much something I did as something I was, or that I had wanted to reassure Kiggs that I was human, desperate that he not be frightened of me because I had known, there among the blowing snow and ash, that I …

I could not even think the word with his fiancée right here, and that was itself another lie. It never ended.

“We—we were so terrified after facing Imlann,” I stammered. “I spoke without thinking, trying to reassure him. Honestly, in that moment, I forgot I even had the—”

“I see the open sincerity in your face. Say just that to him, and it will be well.”

Of course, I had already said that to him, more or less, and it had made things worse. Princess Glisselda stepped toward the door, Millie like a shadow behind her. “There will be a meeting between you, and you will make up. I shall arrange it.”

I rose and curtsied. She added, “You should know: Earl Josef was absent from the palace all day yesterday. Lucian mentioned your suspicions, and I made him ask around. Apsig claims he was in town visiting his mistress but has not been forthcoming with her name.” She looked almost apologetic. “I did mention your expedition to him at the ball. He wanted to know why Lucian would speak with you. It was ill-advised, perhaps.

“But,” she added, brightening again, “our eye is upon him now.”

The girls took their leave, but Glisselda paused in the doorway, raising a finger as if to scold me. “I can’t have you and Lucian feuding! I need you!”

I stumbled into the other room and flopped back onto my bed when she had gone, wishing I shared her optimism, wondering whether she’d be so keen to patch things up between us if she knew what I held unspoken in my heart.





I awoke at midnight in a panic because something was on fire.

I sat bolt upright, or tried to; the morass of my feather mattress pulled me back down as if the bed tick were trying to eat me. I was drenched in sweat. The bed curtains wafted gently, illuminated by the perfectly tame fire in the hearth. Had I been dreaming? I recalled no dream, and I knew the fire was … still burning. I could almost smell smoke; I could feel the heat of it inside my head. Was something happening to the garden of grotesques?

Saints’ dogs. I’d have believed I was going mad if things like this didn’t happen in my mind all the time.

I flopped back in the bed, closed my eyes, and entered my garden. There was smoke in the distance; I ran until I reached the edge of Pandowdy’s swamp. Mercifully, Pandowdy itself was underwater, sleeping, and I was able to pick my way past it. It was the least human of all my grotesques, a sluglike, wallowing creature. It filled me with pity and dread, but it was one of mine as surely as Lars was.

At the heart of the swamp crouched Fruit Bat, and he was on fire.

Or not exactly: the flames came from my memory box, which he clutched to him, his entire body curled around it. He whimpered again, which snapped me out of my shock. I rushed over, grabbed the thing—it seared my fingers—and hurled it into the black water. It hissed, throwing up a cloud of foul steam. I knelt before Fruit Bat—he was just a child!—and examined his bare stomach, the insides of his arms, his face. He had no visible blisters, but his skin was so dark that I wasn’t sure I would recognize the look of burns. I cried, “Are you hurt?”

“No,” he said, prodding himself with his fingertips.

St. Masha’s stone, he was talking to me now. I struggled with fear as I said, “What were you doing? Prying open my box of secrets?”

He said, “The box caught fire.”

“Because you tried to look in it!”

“Never, madamina.” He crossed his thumbs, making his hands into a bird, the Porphyrian gesture for supplication. “I know what’s yours and what’s mine. It burst into flames last night. I threw myself upon it so it would not harm you. Have I done well?”

I turned sharply toward the water; the tin box bobbed, but the fire had not gone out. I was beginning to feel the pain of the flames myself, now that Fruit Bat wasn’t smothering them with his body.