Seraphina(85)

I had managed to stay silent. She couldn’t hear the tears coursing down my cheeks. I took a deep breath and said shakily, “Is what a Saint’s burthen?”

“That silver girdle you wear.”

I thanked all the Saints in Heaven, and their dogs. She had not believed her own eyes. How crazy was that, to think you’d seen dragon scales sprouting out of human flesh? It must have been something, anything else. I coughed, to clear the tears out of my voice, and said as casually as I could, “Oh, that. Yes. Saint’s burthen.”

“For which Saint?”

Which Saint … which Saint … I could not think of a single Saint. Luckily, Millie piped up, “My aunt wore an iron anklet for St. Vitt. It worked: she never doubted again.”


I closed my eyes; it was easier to produce coherent thoughts without vision distracting me. I injected some truth: “At my blessing day, my patron was St. Yirtrudis.”

“The heretic?” They both gasped. No one ever seemed to know what Yirtrudis’s heresy had consisted of, but it didn’t seem to matter. The very idea of heresy was dreadful enough.

“The priest told us Heaven intended St. Capiti,” I continued, “but from that day to this, I’ve had to wear a silver girdle to, uh, deflect heresy.”

This impressed and apparently satisfied them. They handed me a gown; scarlet had won the argument. They did my hair and exclaimed at how lovely I was when I bothered to try. “Keep the gown,” insisted Millie. “Wear it on Treaty Eve.”

“You are all generosity, my Millie!” said Glisselda, pinching Millie’s ear proudly, as if she’d invented her lady-in-waiting herself.

A rap at the door was Dame Okra, who stood on tiptoe to peer past Millie’s shoulder. “She’s all patched up? I’ve found just the person to whisk her away to safety—after which I require a word with you, Infanta.”

Millie and the princess helped me to my feet. “I’m so sorry,” Glisselda whispered warmly in my ear. I looked down at her. Everything seemed shinier viewed through three brandy glasses, but the glittering at the corners of her eyes was real enough.

Dame Okra ushered me out the door, toward my waiting father.





The chill wind in the open sledge did little to sober me up. My father drove, seated close, sharing the lap rug and foot box. My head bobbed unsteadily; he let me rest it on his shoulder. If I were to weep, surely the tears would freeze upon my cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Papa. I tried to keep to myself; I didn’t mean it to go wrong,” I muttered into his dark wool cloak. He said nothing, which I found inexplicably encouraging. I gestured grandly at the dark city, a suitable backdrop to my drunken sense of epic tragic destiny. “But they’re sending Orma away, which is my fault, and I played my flute so beautifully that I fell in love with everyone and now I want everything. And I can’t have it. And I’m ashamed to be running away.”

“You’re not running away,” said Papa, taking the reins in one gloved hand and hesitantly patting my knee with the other. “At least, you need not decide until morning.”

“You’re not going to lock me up for good?” I said, on the verge of blubbering. Some sober part of my brain seemed to observe everything I did, clucking disdainfully, informing me that I ought to be embarrassed, yet making no move to stop me.

Papa ignored that comment, which was probably wise. Snow spangled his gray lawyer’s cap; little droplets stuck to his brows and lashes. He spoke in measured tones. “Did you fall in love with anyone specific, or simply with the things you cannot have?”

“Both,” I said, “and Lucian Kiggs.”

“Ah.” For some time the only sounds were of harness bells, horses snorting in the cold, and packed snow creaking under the sledge runners. My head waxed heavy.

I jerked awake. My father was speaking: “… that she never trusted me. That cut more deeply than anything else. She believed I would stop loving her if I knew the truth. All the gambles she took, and she never took the one that mattered most. One in a thousand is better odds than zero, but zero is what she settled for. Because how could I love her if I couldn’t see her? Whom did I love, exactly?”

I nodded, and jerked awake again. The air was alive, bright with snowflakes.

He said: “… time to mull it over, and I am no longer afraid. I am sickened that you inherited her collapsing house of deceit, and that instead of tearing it down, I shored it up with more deceit. What price must be paid is mine to pay. If you are afraid on your own behalf, fair enough, but do not fear for me—”

Then he was shaking my shoulder lightly. “Seraphina. We’re home.”

I threw my arms around him. He lifted me down and led me through the lighted doorway.





The next morning, I lay a long time, staring at the ceiling of my old room, wondering whether I’d imagined most of what he’d said. That didn’t sound like a conversation I could have had with my father, even if we’d both been drunk as lords.

The sun was obnoxiously bright and my mouth tasted like death, but I didn’t feel bad otherwise. I peeked at my garden, which I’d neglected last night, but everyone was peaceful; even Fruit Bat was up a tree, not demanding my attention. I rose and dressed in an old gown I found in my wardrobe; the scarlet I’d arrived in was too fine for everyday. I descended to the kitchen. Laughter and the smell of morning bread drifted toward me up the corridor. I paused, my hand upon the kitchen door, discerning their voices one by one, dreading to step into that warm room and freeze it up.