Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(126)

Then I was off again, after Mina the winged warrior. She was drilling with the city garrison, instructing them in the use of two swords. She whirled, a silvery cyclone of death, a mesmerizing dance of pain, another half-dragon showing what marvels our kind were capable of. Jannoula had a finger in every pie she could think of, it seemed.

I looked upon Lars and found him on the city wall, supervising the fine-tuning of a trebuchet. Blanche was with him, a cord tied from her waist to his like an umbilical cord. Was it to keep her from harming herself? My heart ached for her.

I checked in on Gaios next and found him walking down Castle Hill toward St. Gobnait’s cathedral with his sister, Gelina, Gianni Patto, and Jannoula. All four wore funereal white, and only then did I realize that the others had been wearing white as well. Was this Jannoula’s chosen color? She hadn’t been raised Goreddi; it would hold no morose associations for her.

Citizens waving flags and flowers had gathered along both sides of the street as if this were a daily parade route. Gaios and Gelina smiled gloriously, waving at the gawking crowds, walking with the confidence of strength, the beauty of youth and athleticism. Hulking, claw-footed Gianni, whose pale hair had begun to grow back like a corona, slumped along at the back, keeping the crowds from coming too close. He looked thoroughly spooked by the cheering citizenry, and I felt a pang of pity.

Between the twins, basking in their glow, walked Jannoula. She spread her arms as if to embrace the entire city. She mimed pulling the people’s love toward herself, crushing it to her breast, washing it over her head. She looked like she was swimming slowly through the air.

I had kept quiet, careful not to draw Gaios’s attention, but he must have felt me holding his hand in my mind. He swatted at the air as if he were bothered by bees. Jannoula looked at him and narrowed her green eyes.

I let him go. I’d seen enough.

I took the hands of Camba’s little avatar and braced myself for whatever might come.

From the ceiling of a palace corridor, I saw Ingar. His square spectacles gleamed; his round face beamed with the same vague cheer as when I’d first met him, under the influence of a Saint. He shuffled slowly up the airy corridor, pushing a wheeled chair.

I did not immediately recognize the tall Porphyrian in the chair, but it was Camba. Her hair had been shaved off—a punishment inflicted by Jannoula, I assumed. She was dressed in a plain white surplice that fit her poorly, and both her ankles were bandaged.

Gianni had thrown her down the stairs, Nedouard had said.

Camba raised one hand, and Ingar stopped the chair, still smiling vapidly. She looked around and behind, craning her long neck, but they were alone in the hallway.

Camba half whispered, “Guaiong.”

Instantly Ingar’s countenance changed, congealing and sharpening into the expression he’d worn in Porphyry. He glanced around, leaned forward, placed his hands on Camba’s shoulders, and said quietly: “What is it, friend? Are you in pain? Is she hurting you again?”

Camba’s head was as bald as Ingar’s now; her brown ears, stripped of ornaments, were perforated with a line of tiny holes. She reached up and grasped Ingar’s pale hands tightly. “Seraphina is looking upon me in her mind. You remember what Pende said: she has a bit of our light. I want her to see that we’re still fighting, that we haven’t given up.”

Ingar smiled wryly at Camba, his eyes full of sadness, kindness, and something more. “I’m not sure my pathetic attempt at a mind-pearl counts as fighting,” he said. “I don’t know how many times it will work. If you can hear me, Seraphina, come back soon.”

I spoke to Camba at last: I hear you. I’m coming.

Camba closed her dusky eyes; Ingar pressed his cheek against her head, his face slowly slipping into forgetfulness again.

I left them, already strategizing. His attempted mind-pearl seemed to restore him to himself for a short time. Camba clearly thought it might be helpful; there must be something we could do with it.

I’d left Abdo for last because I was scared to look for him. Maybe he was simply back in Porphyry; maybe he’d succeeded in making his mind water, as per his meditation book, and Jannoula could not compel him to move.

Or maybe he was dead. But surely not. Surely I would know.

His avatar, to my great surprise, wasn’t with the other grotesques. I looked under the sundial and the loaf-like shrubberies (lifting them out of the ground entirely, and setting them gingerly down), turned over the big leaves at the edge of Pandowdy’s swamp, and found him at last lying half submerged in a mud puddle, stiff as a stick and small as my pinkie. I took his tiny hands between my finger and thumb.

Then I was in the world, my vision-eye hovering in the evening sky above a wood. I knew this place: the edge of the Queenswood. The city shimmered to the southwest, torches illuminating the construction on the walls. Below me a road wound north toward Dewcomb’s Outpost, the mountains, General Zira’s encampment. I hovered at the point where forest met fens. Even in the twilight, the changing trees glowed gold. Leaves spun and danced on the breeze like pale nocturnal butterflies.

I saw no Abdo. I drifted lower, scanning the border between wood and wetland. The road bisected it at a right angle, and here at this almost-crossroads stood a little tumbledown shrine.

I approached the lonely shrine with my vision-eye. Inside, in the near dark, a small stone statue, roughly human-shaped, stood on a plinth. It had no features to speak of, no face, no hands. It wore a red apron edged in gold, the fabric faded and fraying.