Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(21)

She reaches out with her mind, too? I asked. She claims it’s her stomach.

Maybe she can’t tell them apart, said Abdo cheekily.

Dame Okra jerked grotesquely, recovering herself. “Saints in Heaven!” she cried. “Who’s this creature at the front door, then?” She leaped to her feet and rushed up the hall just as someone knocked.

I hurried after her. I had not yet had a chance to mention Finch. “Before you answer that—” I began, but it was too late.

“Augh!” she cried, her voice dripping disgust. “Seraphina, did you invite this person here, all plaguey and pestilent? No, sir, you may not track contagion into my house. Go around to the carriage yard and strip down.”

The doctor had removed his grimy apron and gloves and changed his robes; he still wore the ominous beaked mask, and his boots were indeed too muddy for her fine floors. I squeezed by Dame Okra, who puffed up indignantly.

“Leave your boots here,” I told the doctor. He hurriedly pried them off. I took his arm and said, “You are welcome. I failed to warn her you were coming.”

I led our new guest to the dining room, Dame Okra squawking behind us. Josquin stood again, with a cry of “Buonarrive, Dotoro Basimo!” and offered the older man his seat.

Finch shuffled over in his stocking feet, shoulders hunched anxiously, and sat. Josquin took the seat beside him.

“You know this ghoul?” demanded Dame Okra, switching the conversation back to Goreddi. She lingered behind in the doorway with her arms folded skeptically.

“Dr. Basimo keeps Count Pesavolta apprised of plague cases,” said Josquin brightly. “They’re trying to prevent another epidemic year. It’s a noble endeavor.”

The doctor perched on the very edge of a chair, his hands clasped between his knees, eyeing us through his glass lenses with trepidation.

“He’s one of us,” I said to Dame Okra. “We found him this morning.”

“Take your mask off, then. You’re among friends, by St. Prue,” Dame Okra called, coming no closer and sounding not the least bit friendly.

“You don’t have to, if you’re not comfortable,” I said, belaying her demand.

Dr. Basimo considered a moment, then pulled off his bag-like mask. I knew what we would see. I’d warned Dame Okra, but still she gasped. Josquin averted his eyes and took a quick sip of coffee.

Under the mask’s leather beak was a real one, thick and strong like a finch’s. Unlike a finch’s, it had serrated edges, reminiscent of a dragon’s teeth. He had no separate nose, just avian nostrils atop the beak. His bald, liver-spotted head and scrawny old-man’s neck made him look like a buzzard, but no buzzard ever gazed so intelligently through mournful eyes the color of a summer sky.

“Please call me Nedouard,” said the doctor, taking pains to speak clearly. It was hard for him; I could see his black tongue laboring to make up for the stiffness of his beak, and he couldn’t help the curious snapping sound where language required the lips he didn’t have. “The little fellow said you were all half-dragons. I had believed there were none but me.”

I sat down across from him and rolled up my left sleeve to show the silver dragon scales spiraling up my forearm. Nedouard hesitantly reached across and touched them. “I have a few of those as well,” he said softly. “You are fortunate to have escaped this.” He gestured toward his beak.

“It seems to manifest differently in everyone,” I said. Abdo obligingly stuck out his scaly tongue.

Nedouard nodded thoughtfully. “That doesn’t surprise me. The surprise is that humans and dragons can intermix at all. But what about—” He nodded at Josquin.

“Oh, not me,” said the herald. He’d gone pale, but he tried valiantly to smile.

Dame Okra said grudgingly, “I have a tail. And no, I won’t show you.”

Nedouard accepted a cup of coffee from Abdo with an almost inaudible “Thank you,” and then there was an awkward silence.

“Did you grow up in Segosh, Nedouard?” I asked gently.

“No, I was born in the village of Basimo,” he said, stirring his coffee, though he’d put nothing in it. “My mother took refuge there, at the Convent of St. Loola. She’d fled her home; she told the nuns my father was a dragon, but they didn’t believe it until they saw my face.”

“You were born with …?” I mimed the beak. “My scales didn’t come in until I was eleven. Abdo’s came in when he was … six?” I looked for confirmation; Abdo nodded.

“Oh, the scales came later,” he said. “The face, alas, was always as you see it. My mother died in childbirth, but there was never any question of the sisters caring for me, however malformed—St. Loola is patroness to children and fools. They raised, educated, and loved me like a son. I wore a mask outside the convent. The villagers were fearful at first, but I was steady and peaceable. They came to accept me.

“Basimo was ravaged by plague when I was seventeen. The convent took in the sick, of course, and I learned to care for the victims, but …” He picked up a spoon and set it down again, drummed agitated fingers. “In the end, there were only five of us left. There is no village of Basimo, not anymore. Only the name I brought with me.”

“How do you manage here?” I asked, careful not to add, With a face like that.