Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(141)

“Forgive me for interrupting your meal, brethren,” cried Jannoula, “but it’s time! The Loyalists approach, and the Old Ard will be close on their tails. St. Abaster’s Trap must be put to its holy purpose. Today the world will witness what the minds of the blessed can do.”

The others leaped to their feet, muttering enthusiastically, and filed up the spiral stair. Camba wasn’t with them; she took her meals in her room because she couldn’t climb the stairs. She wouldn’t know things were moving forward earlier than expected. It was hard to feel for her mind-fire in my garden without calming my mind first, but sometimes desperation did the trick. Camba, I thought at her, be ready to start unhooking people if Jannoula falls.

Jannoula grabbed my arm again, and I jumped. “Come watch us. Even one who insists on walking this world alone must be awed by what we can accomplish together.”

She’d anticipated my request. That could not be good. I followed her up the stairs, my heart sinking into my shoes.

The others were already gathered on the roof, twelve ityasaari: Nedouard, Blanche, Lars, Mina, Phloxia, Od Fredricka, Brasidas, Gaios, Gelina, Gianni Patto, Dame Okra, and Ingar. The rain clouds had parted, and the sunlight made their white garments gleam like a beacon, like the ard fires of old. They stood in a semicircle before the low balustrade wall. Blanche was tied to Lars with a rope too short to wrap around her neck, safe against her will.

If our plan worked, Blanche might soon be free. I hoped for it fervently.

They joined hands in a horseshoe, open toward the northern mountains, Ingar at one end and Nedouard at the other. I lingered to one side. Jannoula joined the very center of the line, her mouth bowed upward into a hard little smile. She began a ritual chant from St. Yirtrudis’s testament, what the Saints of old had recited when they strung their minds with St. Abaster’s: We are one mind, mind within mind, mind beyond mind, warp and weft of the greater mind.

I edged up to Ingar and quietly said, “Guaiong.”

Ingar came to himself, eyelids fluttering open, and nodded at me. He remembered what to do. At the other end of the chain, Nedouard nodded back.

Jannoula closed her eyes. I could almost follow her mind-fire traveling down the line, each ityasaari gasping in turn, expressions melting into something ecstatic—except for Blanche, who whimpered in pain.

Ingar and Nedouard tensed their shoulders as if bracing for a blow, ready to cast their wills against Jannoula’s. I pressed my hands together, praying to no one in particular. This had to work.

Jannoula opened one eye and looked at me, a slow-motion wink in reverse. She grinned with perfect feline malice, threw her head back, and cried out. I thought—hoped—she had been hit with reflected fire, but then Nedouard and Ingar screamed and fell to their knees, writhing in agony.

“I can be a mirror, too,” said Jannoula. “And Nedouard can be my spy without even knowing it.”

Nedouard rolled around, weeping and flailing; Ingar clutched his head in torment.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Don’t punish them. It was my idea.”

“Oh, I’m punishing you, too,” she said. Nedouard and Ingar screamed louder. Tears sprang to my eyes; I could not bear this.

Jannoula stood between Od Fredricka and Brasidas. She stepped out of line and joined their hands together behind her, like latching a door. I backed away from her without looking, remembered how high we were, and sank to my knees dizzily. Jannoula hauled me to my feet. The world reeled.

“Look!” she cried, forcing me up to the low retaining wall, pointing at a dark line rising above the peaks like a storm front. There were more dragons than I had ever seen at one time, Comonot’s Loyalists making their strategic retreat.

“Now look here,” she commanded, wheeling me around to face the southwest. Past our encamped knights, past our baronets and their bivouacked armies, past the colorful force arrived this week from Ninys, columns of dark-uniformed troops crossed the horizon.

“The Samsamese,” I croaked. “Whose side will they take?”

She shrugged. “Who can say?”

“Surely you can. You maneuvered them here.”

Jannoula laughed. “That’s the beauty of it. I genuinely don’t know. Perhaps Josef will sit and watch. Perhaps some of the Goreddi and Ninysh knights he pressed into service will turn on him. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?

“You haven’t even seen the Old Ard yet. The sky will be full of fire.” She raised her pointed chin into the wind, like she was posing for a portrait. “Of course, there might have been more, but a third of the Old Ard’s forces went back to the Kerama to intercept Comonot.”

That news arrived like a punch in the face. I had thought myself such a skeptic, the only one who knew what she really was, but I’d believed her when she said she wasn’t working for the Old Ard.

She gazed at me coolly. “Oh, come now, don’t sulk. Comonot has a chance. He’s taken four labs, gaining momentum and support as he goes; he’s persuaded backwater settlements to join him, and every quig in the Tanamoot is his friend.” Her face puckered when she said quig, as if she could smell one. “At least, that’s the last we’ve heard. The Queen’s only communication link to him has been mysteriously severed.”

I suspected this was not so mysterious, at least to Jannoula.

“Anyway, it seemed unsporting that he should walk into the capital virtually unopposed,” she said. “No one would die. Peace might break out before I wished it to.”