Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(148)

It was also downhill. That helped.

I was racing the sun, which crawled relentlessly toward the door of dawn. I passed trampled farmland, burned-out barns; I prayed the farmers had reached the city and the tunnels safely. A flock of renegade sheep flowed across the road ahead of me, turned south so they blocked my way, then north so they ran right at me. I let them rush around me, a fleecy river, then kept on my way.

To my left, smoke rose from the city, and its walls were scorched and cracked in places. I saw movement on the walls as fresh soldiers replaced the night guard. I wondered if any of them saw me running.

I could see the camps now, the armies beginning to stir. To the north, in the Queenswood, the Old Ard camped. The Loyalists were south, out of sight from here, behind some low hills, so that they might strike from unexpected angles. Our knights and the ragtag infantries of Ninys and Goredd were spread across the south, and to the west were the Samsamese. The Ninysh had thrown up hasty earthworks against the Samsamese—yesterday, presumably, while I wandered the swamp. The dirt walls would shunt the Samsamese north, making it easier for them to engage with the Old Ard than with the Goreddis.

My road led into the middle of everything. I was practically falling over my feet by this point. I let myself walk the last half mile, past torn-up fields and pasture churned to mud, tying the gown’s long sleeves to the sword as I went.

The gown and sword, a makeshift flag, caught the breeze when I raised it above my head. It flapped behind me, and the first rays of sun, cutting underneath a heavy brow of cloud, shone on the fabric and made the white linen glow. It was my flag of surrender.

There was movement in the camps, a stirring that I hoped was a question: Which side had sent me out, and why?

One by one, the camps sent representatives to parley. Sir Maurizio did not immediately recognize me; he paused when he realized whom he was walking toward, but then put his head down and picked his way doggedly across the blackened field. Not far behind him, a familiar blond beard bobbed: it belonged to Captain Moy, who’d escorted me through Ninys. The Old Ard sent a general, shrunk into his saarantras, who introduced himself as General Palonn; I knew him as Jannoula’s uncle, the one who’d put her at the mercies of the Censors. The Loyalists sent General Zira, whose saarantras was a thickset, energetic woman. Neither Palonn nor Zira had bothered lightening their skin for the likes of me. The Regent of Samsam, Josef erstwhile Earl of Apsig, sauntered up last with apparent unconcern, his helmet under his arm and his fair hair tossing in the breeze.

“Whose envoy are you, then?” he sneered. “Blessed Jannoula would not have sent you. She warned me that you were not to be trusted.”

“She was right: I am absolutely not to be trusted,” I said, barely glancing at him. No one had yet appeared upon the city walls.

Josef puffed up indignantly, but it was hard to quarrel when I’d agreed with him.

If I was to reflect Jannoula’s fire, I had to attract her attention, but I still saw no sign of her atop the Ard Tower. I stalled. “My friends, I am here to discuss the treachery of a certain half-dragon called Jannoula—”

“A half-dragon like yourself?” said General Zira, as abrupt and intimidating in her saarantras as in her natural form. “Like the half-dragons who have been indiscriminately knocking my Loyalists out of the sky?”

“A corrupt, unnatural being,” purred General Palonn. “We know her. We intend to kill her when this is all over, you may be sure of that. She fooled us for a time, but it has become clear that she’s playing both sides.”

“Yes,” I said. “She has lied to all sides, bent this war to her own purposes with her formidable powers of persuasion—”

“The person who persuaded Ninys to help Goredd was you,” said Captain Moy, looking at me sidelong and tugging on his long blond beard. “We know nothing of this Jannoula.”

“And who was supposed to kill her if there was no other way to stop her?” said Sir Maurizio, holding up an antler-handled dagger. “I think we’re owed an explanation for this.”

“I have your explanation,” said Josef snidely. “Seraphina is a deceitful snake.”

I had completely lost control of this parley, but I couldn’t let myself get upset, not even at Josef. Persuading them wasn’t the point—although it was galling that there seemed to be so many good reasons to blame me for everything. I said, “Jannoula doesn’t care who wins, only that we lose as many good people and dragons as possible.”

“The only good dragon—” Josef cut off sharply and clutched at his heart, eyes wide. I followed his gaze toward the city and saw her, our Jannoula, striding out along the battlements. A stray sunbeam had cut through the clouds and illuminated her blinding white gown, almost as if she’d planned it. The other ityasaari followed behind her, as many as could stand, like a line of doves.

All eyes turned toward her. She took the hand of the half-dragon next to her to make the chain, and they raised hands together as if in victory. Josef fell to his knees. “Santi Merdi!” cried Moy, and Maurizio gasped, and even the two dragon generals looked stunned. “Can you identify the source of that light?” Zira asked, almost inaudibly.

So dragons could see it, too. I really was alone in my incapacity.

Here was my chance, though. She’d come out to show everyone the light—or Heaven, or whatever dragons took her mind-fire to be. I willed myself to reflect it back at her. Nothing seemed to happen. Nedouard and Ingar had been able to reflect by willing it, but then they’d been threaded directly to her mind. I would find the way. I had tucked the little mirror into my sleeve; I gripped it now to give me strength, and threw everything I had at Jannoula.