Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(152)

By evening I had ebbed entirely into myself again. Life still glowed around me—the ityasaari blazed like torches—but I no longer saw everything at once. No one can live like this all the time, Pandowdy had said. It was a relief in a way. There were mundane things that needed my attention.

We ityasaari sat up with St. Eustace for Nedouard that night. A private wake at the seminary was followed by his interment beneath St. Gobnait’s at dawn. Only the ityasaari, Prince Lucian Kiggs, and Queen Glisselda attended; he’d had no family in Ninys to track down.

Dame Okra Carmine, his ambassadress, made sure he had the proper Ninysh touches: spruce wreaths at his head and feet, pine-flavored pastries, and sweet Segoshi raisin wine. She wept harder than anyone, ashamed of all she had done and been. I didn’t see how to reassure her; my forgiveness—or Blanche’s—could not make a dent in her guilt.

Nedouard was interred in a wall niche in the cathedral’s catacombs. I wept for the kindly, unfortunate doctor. He’d asked me a question once: Are we irretrievably broken? I hadn’t known the answer, but I thought I knew it now. After most of the others had filed out of the crypt, I whispered to his grave plaque: “Never beyond repair, good heart.”

Blanche, kneeling in prayer nearby, heard me. She stood, brushing the dust of centuries off her dark blue gown (we were none of us wearing white, I noticed, though this was a funeral). She took my arm and silently accompanied me out of the catacombs.

We caught up with the others climbing the hill to Castle Orison. A quilt of cloud shrouded the sun, and the breeze blew chill; the rains of late autumn would set in soon. As we trudged along, an unexpected shouting arose behind us, a voice that was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar: “Phina! Prince Lucian!”

The street was full of people following us while trying to appear like they weren’t. Kiggs stepped up beside me and pointed. “That’s not … is it?”

“It is!” came another shout. Abdo ducked out from behind a cartload of firewood and charged up the hill toward us.

“You can hear him?” I asked Kiggs.

“How can I not? He’s shouting.”

“And I will shout again!” cried Abdo. “I can’t stop shouting!”

He was completely filthy, as befitted a lad who’d spent weeks camping out in a shrine and trekking across swampland. His hair was tangled, full of moss and twigs. The cleanest thing about him was his grin, which was enormous and gleamed like the moon.

“Hello, everyone!” he shouted without moving his lips. The other half-dragons’ mouths already hung open; there were only eyes left to bug out, which they did alarmingly.

“How are you doing thet?” said Lars.

Abdo did a little waggling dance, sticking his tongue out and making antlers of his hands, the whole and the broken. “I figured it out! My mind is as large as the entire world. I could speak to everyone at once, if I wished. It’s not talking, exactly, but it sounds the same, doesn’t it?”

He was using his mind-fire—the way everyone had heard me say Pandowdy’s name—to make a sound heard with the ears and the mind and the heart all at once.

Lars said, “It wouldt be less eerie if you move your lips and pretendt the sound comes from your face.”

“Oh!” said Abdo, contorting his lips. “I’m out of practice.”

He was moving his mouth in the wrong ways at the wrong time, clearly faking. It was hard to watch. “You could practice in front of the glass,” I suggested.

He shrugged, grinning, too delighted with himself to take it as criticism. He bounced around us, greeting each half-dragon in turn. He hugged Camba, in her wheeled chair, and laughed when she told him he needed a bath. Blanche, who still clung to my arm, watched him in wonderment, a smile slowly creeping across her lips.



The ityasaari did not care to spend one more night in the Garden of the Blessed, and neither did I. I had everything moved back to my old suite as soon as possible.

Blanche, Od Fredricka, and Gianni Patto took up residence at Dame Okra’s large ambassadorial residence in town while she made arrangements for them to return to Ninys. “They’re going to need protections and assurances, to say nothing of support,” she explained, bustling about officiously, when I visited her at home. “Count Pesavolta isn’t certain he wants them, said they’re ‘disruptive’ and ‘polarizing.’ Well, I expect I can hammer some certainty into him.”

“They’re welcome to remain in Goredd,” I said. “The Queen said—”

“I know,” she said, her froggy face puckering sadly. “But you must understand, now they associate Goredd with … well, with that time. You can’t blame them.”

I didn’t, but I wished things were different.

Lars stayed at the palace for now, although he did not return to Viridius. The old man used me as a go-between. I told Lars that Viridius forgave him and wanted him back, but Lars just smiled sadly and said, “I cannot yet forgive myself.” He drifted through the palace like a ghost.

News reached us that Porphyry had dissuaded further Samsamese aggression with a decisive naval victory. The Porphyrian ityasaari wanted to set out for home before winter made the roads difficult. Gaios, Gelina, and Mina spoke of taking off on new journeys after escorting the others back. They were only waiting for Camba and Pende to be well enough to travel.