Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(134)

I wanted so badly to contact the prince, to learn what he’d done after the council meeting and what he was doing now. Would he try to see Glisselda? There were other ways he could help me; he could spy in the city at large and come to understand the general attitude toward these upstart Saints. If the city was still preparing wholeheartedly for war, what did the people believe about this era of peace Jannoula had told me she was ushering in?

Or he could find my uncle. I had no intention of waiting on Jannoula’s whim.

Jannoula had tasks to attend to, as did most of the ityasaari. I checked every room, starting at the top, and learned that none of the doors locked. I found no one but cooking, cleaning pilgrims, until I reached the bottom floor. In a whitewashed room with a sooty hearth and a shuttered arrow-loop window, Paulos Pende lay upon the narrow bed, Camba in her wheeled chair at his side.

Pende’s eyes were open, but he seemed not to see me. The right side of his face sagged as if it had melted. Camba held his gnarled, arthritic hand.

She smiled sadly at the sight of me. “You came. I’m sorry I can’t stand to greet you. I am not quite as you remember.” She touched her shaved head self-consciously. “I’m in mourning until we are returned to ourselves.”

I closed the door behind me, crossed the plank floor, and kissed her cheeks. “I’m relieved to see Pende lives, but so very sorry you were dragged here. What happened?”

Camba’s eyes were dark and solemn. “Poor Pende. He could not resist her long; he had the skill, but not the strength. Jannoula made a puppet of him. He lay hands on us, as he used to do to pull out her hooks, but now he was putting the hooks in. If anyone refused the touch, he threatened to harm himself.” Camba looked at the old priest with tenderness and sorrow. “In brief moments, when he was himself, he begged me not to acquiesce, to let her kill him. But he is my spiritual father. I couldn’t let it happen.”

The door opened behind me and I startled, but it was only Ingar, carrying an armload of wood and kindling. He bobbed his head at me and began with hazy cheerfulness to build a fire.

Camba watched him, her eyes distant. “Once she caught us, she sent us to the harbor by night. We stole a fishing boat and were halfway across the gulf before anyone missed us, I imagine.”

“She couldn’t possess all of you at once,” I said, as if I could change what had happened by pointing out that it couldn’t have.

“She didn’t have to,” said Camba. “Some have no defenses once she’s in. The twins, Phloxia, Mina. It’s like she turns a compass in their heads, and suddenly north is south and west is east, and they are easily led in any direction. Brasidas can partition his mind and keep her away from the vital parts, but he’s an old man. What can he do against Mina and her swords? What can I do?”

That was a bleak question. We sat silently, watching Ingar prod the nascent fire.

“When we were nearly here,” Camba began again, her voice almost inaudible, “Abdo dove out of the wagon into the Queenswood. I expected Jannoula to force him back, or to send Mina after him, but suddenly Pende was on his feet screaming, fighting her in his head. We felt it; I don’t know how. He sent his fire back at her, and it scorched us all.” She stroked the old man’s gnarled hand.

“It broke him,” I said, my voice hushed and awed. He’d given everything he had.

“But Abdo escaped,” Camba said, holding up a finger. “I draw strength from that. There are ways to fight back, and she can’t anticipate everything. Our differences work to our advantage.”

The fire crackled. Ingar stepped back from it, looking lost. Camba called his name softly; he came to her and sat on the floor at her feet, leaning his head on her knee.

“When I looked in on you yesterday, I saw … what you wanted me to see.” I didn’t like to say mind-pearl within Ingar’s hearing; he might report everything we were saying to Jannoula. “What can you tell me about that?”


Camba’s dark, solemn eyes told me she understood. “It was his idea to try it. He pulled everything important into one corner of his mind, sealed it off so she can’t get it, and let her have the rest. He knew he couldn’t keep her out altogether, that she would pour into her old pathways like molten silver into an empty ants’ nest. I’m surprised it works as well as it does, but I don’t know how long he can keep it up.”

“We will talk more about this later,” I said. In private, I wanted to add, but didn’t. Camba was sharp enough to glean what I meant. “There must be some way we can use … all the things we’ve learned.”

Nedouard would help us, too, but I didn’t dare mention him now. Mine was the only mind secure enough to hold all the pieces; alas, that meant I was going to have to puzzle them together on my own.

Camba opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment we heard footsteps across the ceiling, as if a herd of merry cattle had come prancing in. The ityasaari were back; I could not linger here. I kissed her cheeks again and went up to meet the others.



Devoted townswomen had set up a long supper table in the chapel on the second floor, and the ityasaari were busily seating themselves around it. I stood in the doorway a moment, watching my fellow half-dragons with a lump in my throat.

Ingar came upstairs behind me and said, “Excuse me.” I was in his way. I tried to back out of the room, but Dame Okra spotted me and was at my side in an instant, embracing me and crying, “Home at last, dear girl!” Winged Mina and shark-toothed Phloxia kissed my cheeks; Gaios and Gelina led me to the table. I sat by blind Brasidas, who squeezed my fingers and whispered, “Did you bring your flute?” Od Fredricka brought me a bowl of lentil soup from the townwomen’s cauldron by the fire; Nedouard, apparently anxious not to seem too glad to see me, nodded his beaked head minutely. Lars smiled with heartbreaking warmth; pale Blanche, still tied to Lars by a cord around her waist, kept her eyes on the table, picked at a scale on her cheek, and did not smile. Gianni Patto sat upon the woodpile by the hearth, a loaf in each hand, and roared, “Fee-nah!” with his mouth full of chewed-up bread.