Seraphina(81)

“I want you to take tomorrow off. See the Golden Plays, visit your family, go out drinking, anything. I’ll handle dress rehearsal,” said Viridius, in his suite after choir practice. He’d been dictating a composition; his comment surprised me so that I jammed the quill awkwardly against a rough patch of parchment, creating an enormous inkblot.

“Have I done something wrong, sir?” I asked, dabbing at the mess with a rag.

He leaned back on his velvet cushion and gazed out the window at the overcast sky and the snowy courtyard. “Quite the contrary. You improve upon everything you touch. I think you’ve earned a day of rest.”

“I just had a day of rest. Two, if being beset by dragons counts as rest.”

He chewed his lower lip. “The council passed a resolution last night—”

“The species-check initiative? Guntard told me.”

He gazed at me keenly. “I thought you might prefer not to be here.”

My hands went clammy; I wiped them on my skirts. “Sir, if you are referring to a rumor circulated about me, by persons unknown, I can assure you—”

He put his gout-swollen, clawlike hand on my forearm and raised his rusty brows. “I’ll put in a good word for you,” he said. “I know I’m not the cuddliest old brick, not always easy to work with, but you’ve done well. If I don’t say so often, it doesn’t mean I don’t notice. You’re the most talented thing we’ve had round these parts since Tertius was taken from us, may he dine at Heaven’s table.”

“Put in a good word for me why?”

His thick lips quivered. “Seraphina, I knew your mother.”

I gasped. “You are mistaken, sir.” The room seemed not to contain enough air.

“I heard her perform at Chateau Rodolphi in Samsam, some twenty years ago, when I was traveling with Tertius—rest he on Heaven’s hearthstone. She was utterly captivating. When Tertius told me she was a saar, I didn’t believe him at first.”

Viridius gestured toward the ewer; I poured him a cup of water, but when I brought it to him, he said, “No, no, for you. You’ve gone purple around the gills. Calm yourself, child. I’ve known all along, haven’t I? And said nothing?”

I nodded shakily. The cup clattered against my teeth.

He idly tapped his cane on the floor until he thought I was ready to listen again. “I asked Linn to teach at St. Ida’s, where I was headmaster at the time. She said she couldn’t; she was a student herself, just finishing up her research. I sponsored her petition for bell exemption, that she might pursue her research here without terrifying the librarians—or her students, because I hoped she’d teach. It seemed ideal.”

I found myself desperate to slap him, as if he were the author of all my troubles. “It wasn’t ideal.”

“In hindsight, perhaps that’s not surprising. She could really pass, your mother, and she was something extraordinary. She wasn’t bothered with daintiness or coyness or other flavors of silliness; she was strong and practical, and she took no nonsense from anyone. If I’d any interest in women, even I could have seen my way to loving her. It was academic, of course, like the idea that one might shift the entire world with a long-enough lever. One could, but one can’t. Close your mouth, dear.”

My heart palpated painfully. “You knew she was a saar and my father was human, and you never told anyone?”

He heaved himself to his feet and limped over to the window. “I’m a Daanite. I don’t go around criticizing other people’s love affairs.”

“As her sponsor, weren’t you supposed to report her to the embassy before it went too far?” I said, my voice full of tears. “Couldn’t you have warned my father, at the very least?”

“It seems so obvious, in retrospect,” he said quietly, examining a spot on the front of his loose linen shirt. “At the time, I was merely happy for her.”

I took a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me now? You haven’t decided to—”

“To give up my peerless assistant? Do I look mad to you, maidy? Why do you think I’m warning you about the bleed? We’ll spirit you away somewhere, or we’ll find one trustworthy person high up who can keep a secret. The prince—”

“No,” I said, too quickly. “There’s no need. My blood is as red as yours.”

He sighed. “So I’ve gone and revealed how much I admire your work for nothing. Now you’ll feel free to laze around self-importantly, I suppose!”

“Viridius, no,” I said, stepping toward him and impulsively kissing his balding head. “I’m well aware that that’s your job.”

“Damned right,” he grumbled. “And I’ve earned it, too.”


I helped him back to his gout couch, and he finished dictating the major theme and two subthemes of his composition, along with an idea for metamorphosing each into the other, involving an extraordinary transposition. I jotted everything down mechanically at first; it took some time for me to settle down after Viridius’s revelation about my mother, but the music calmed and then awed me. I was gawping inside, like a country girl seeing the cathedral for the first time. Here were flying buttresses and rose windows of music; here columns and vaulting, more prosaic structural elements; and all of it in service to a unified purpose, to clarifying and perfecting the majestic space inside, a soaring expanse as awe-inspiring as the architecture that bounded it.