Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(17)

The prince flashed me a rueful smile. “I’ve lived that. We must compare notes someday.” He jingled the thniks, bringing us back to task. “The bronze links to one we’ve given Dame Okra, so the two of you can keep in touch while you’re in Ninys. She intends for you to travel around while she valiantly stays at home in Segosh.”

“Of course she does,” I said. He smiled again. I felt a little guilty for cultivating those smiles; I wasn’t allowed.

“The sweetheart knot”—he held up the intricate silver tangle—“connects with the master box in Selda’s study. She wants to hear from you twice a week, whether you’re having successes or not. She was adamant that if she doesn’t hear from you, she shall fret, and her fretting has international consequences now.”

I held out my hand, smiling at how he’d unconsciously copied her inflections. He laid the thniks in my palm and closed my fingers around them. My breath caught.

He quickly released me, clearing his throat and reaching for the leather pouch under his arm. “Next order of business: documents. You’ve got the Queen’s scrip, should you need funds; a list of pyria ingredients to order on the Crown’s behalf; another of Ninysh baronets and Samsamese earls of particular interest, with letters of introduction. Finding the ityasaari is your priority, but you’ll be staying with local gentry as you travel. You may as well encourage them to commit aid.”

“I’m to guilt everyone into helping us?” I teased.

“You’re to gently remind them,” he said, “of what Count Pesavolta and the Regent already promised on their behalf. Petty nobles are more likely to help if they believe we’ll notice.”

He held out the satchel; I took it and peeked in at the sheaf of parchments. “Nice to have legitimacy.”

Kiggs laughed; I’d hoped he would. He was a bastard and had an odd sense of humor about it. His dark eyes gleamed in the firelight. “I shall miss you, Phina.”

I fidgeted with the leather bag on my lap. “I already miss you,” I said. “I’ve been missing you these last three months.”

“You too?” he said. His hands tightened on the arms of his chair. “I’m so sorry.”

I tried to smile. It felt thin on my lips.

Kiggs tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I hadn’t appreciated how hard it would be not to see you or speak to you. We cannot control our hearts, but I thought we might at least control our actions and minimize the lying—”

“You don’t have to defend yourself to me,” I said quietly. “I agreed with you.”

“Agreed? Past tense?” he said, picking up on something I hadn’t intended to reveal.

This prince was too astute. I loved him for it.

I swiftly crossed the room to my bookcase and found the book easily amid the clutter. I waved the slim volume of Pontheus’s Love and Work that he’d given me.

“Is this a rebuke?” he said, leaning forward, his expression keen. “I know what you’re going to quote: ‘There is no pain in truth, no comfort in lies.’ And that is all very well, except when you know the truth is going to hurt someone you love, and you know, furthermore, what pain she endures already: her mother dead, her grandmother dying, she herself thrown into the deep ocean of queenship and war before she’s ready.”

He rose animatedly and declared, “I will see her through this, Seraphina. I will bear this pain, suffer anything on her behalf until she’s through this storm.”

“It sounds so noble when you put it that way,” I said, more snappishly than I meant to.

His shoulders slumped. “I’m not trying to be noble. I’m trying to be kind.”

I stepped toward him until we were face to face, the breadth of a book between us. “I know you are,” I said quietly. I tapped his chest with the volume of Pontheus. “The day will come.”

He smiled sadly, then placed his hands around mine so we were clasping the book together. “I believe that—with everything I have,” he said, holding my gaze. He kissed the edge of the book because he could not kiss me.

He released my hands—just as well, because I needed to breathe—and reached into his hidden doublet pocket again. “One last thing,” he said, pulling out another medallion, gold this time. “Not a thnik,” he said hastily, handing it over.

It was a Saint’s medal, exquisitely engraved with an image of a woman holding her head on a platter: St. Capiti, my patroness.

My public patroness, that is. When I was an infant, the psalter had chosen St. Yirtrudis, the heretic. The quick-thinking priest had substituted St. Capiti. I was glad he had; I was scary enough without St. Yirtrudis tied to me. I had never been able to learn what her heresy consisted in, but the label heretic marred everything associated with her. Her shrines had been smashed and her images excised.

I had never told anyone about her, not even Kiggs.

“May Heaven smile upon your journey,” Kiggs was saying. “I know you’re not pious. It’s for my peace of mind more than yours. And belief aside, I want to make sure you know.” He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. “Whatever you may find upon the road, you have a home and friends to come back to.”

Words caught in my throat. I did have friends now, more than ever before in my life. I did feel at home here. What gap was I still trying to fill by gathering the ityasaari? When would that emptiness ever be filled?