Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(13)

She glared at me, her eyes bulging fiercely.

“Peace, Dame Okra,” I said. “You thought you were alone in all the world. Surely it has been a relief to discover others like yourself?”

“Abdo and Lars are good enough,” she conceded. “And you’re not so terrible.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to mean it. “But would you begrudge the others? Some never got past your streets-of-Segosh stage and are still stealing to eat.” She opened her mouth, but I anticipated her: “And not because they’re stupid or less deserving than you.”

She puffed air through her lips. “Maybe,” she said. “But do not make the mistake, Seraphina, of supposing that suffering ennobles anyone. Some may be lovely, but most will be hurt beyond your skill to heal.” She stood up, adjusting her false bosom. “You’re going to bring back some genuinely unpleasant people. You know my gift involves prognostication, and I’m telling you, this will end unhappily. I have foreseen it.”

“Noted,” I said, a chill creeping up my spine. Could she see that far into the future?

She turned to go, but looked back superciliously. “When it all goes to the devil—and it will—at least I shall have the pleasure of saying I told you so.”

On that optimistic note, she left me to my headache.





By the next morning, the headache had dissipated and my enthusiasm restored itself. Maybe it didn’t matter whether my mind-fire was hidden away, or if I could participate in the invisible wall; I was connected to our far-flung brethren in a way that Abdo, Dame Okra, and Lars were not. It would be my job—my honor, truly—to find them and bring them home.

Before bed, I had written to Glisselda about Abdo and Lars’s success. A page boy interrupted my breakfast with an invitation to the Queen’s suite. I put on a nicer gown than I would have otherwise and went to the royal family’s wing of the palace. The guard, who was expecting me, let me into an airy sitting room with high ceilings, salon couches around a tiled hearth, and draperies of gold and white and blue. At the back of the room before the tall windows stood a round table set for breakfast, and behind it sat Glisselda’s grandmother, Queen Lavonda, in a wheeled chair. Her spine was bent; her skin looked pale and fragile, like crumpled paper. Her grandchildren sat on either side, chatting encouragingly at her. Glisselda spooned porridge into her grandmother’s mouth, open like a baby bird’s, and then Kiggs tenderly wiped her chin.

The old Queen had never recovered from the events of midwinter. Imlann’s poison had been neutralized, according to the best dragon physicians Comonot could procure. They saw no other cause for her continued illness, though one had hypothesized a series of small strokes, deep in her brain. Being dragons, they had rejected outright the notion that grief might be a cause, but the human population of Goredd believed otherwise. Queen Lavonda had lost all her children—Kiggs’s mother, Princess Laurel, had died years before, but Prince Rufus and Princess Dionne had been murdered in short succession at midwinter, the latter killed by the same poison the Queen had survived.

The old Queen had nurses and servants in abundance, but I’d heard that Kiggs and Glisselda insisted upon feeding their grandmother breakfast each day. This was the first I’d seen of it, and I was filled with sorrow for them and awe at how much they loved and honored the old woman, even when she was no longer fully herself.

I approached and gave full courtesy.

“Seraphina!” cried Glisselda, handing the spoon over to her cousin and wiping her hands. “Your report was so encouraging that Lucian and I have started planning. You’re to leave the day after the equinox, if this thaw persists.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again. That was six days away.

“We’ve been trying to estimate how long your journey will take,” said Kiggs, his eyes on his grandmother. She rolled her brown eyes toward him, her lips quivering anxiously. He patted her speckled hand. “If you took six weeks in Ninys and another six in Samsam, you might arrive in Porphyry just after midsummer.”

“Officially, you’d be an emissary of the Goreddi Crown, authorized to solicit and acquire promises of supplies and troops for our defense,” said Glisselda, retucking the napkin under her grandmother’s chin. “Not that we don’t trust dear Count Pesavolta and the Regent of Samsam to do their parts. But the personal touch is so much nicer.”

“Your main objective is to find the ityasaari,” said Kiggs.

“What if I can’t?” I said. “Or can’t find them quickly enough? Is it more important to stay on schedule or to bring them home?”

The royal cousins exchanged a look. “We must decide case by case,” said Kiggs. “Selda, we need to ask Comonot to authorize the use of a thnik for Seraphina.”

“And by ‘we’ you mean me,” Glisselda said crossly, putting her hands on her hips. “That saar! After the argument we had yesterday over Eskar’s—”

The old Queen began to weep softly. Glisselda was on her feet at once, her arms around her grandmother’s frail shoulders. “Oh, Grandmamma, no!” she said, kissing her white hair. “I’m cross at that infuriating old dragon, not you. Not Lucian, either, see?” She went up behind Kiggs and hugged him, too.

“Honestly, Lucian, we should get married tomorrow,” said Glisselda out of the side of her mouth. “Let her have one happy thing in her life before she dies.”