Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(27)

“That’s not entirely true,” said Kiggs quietly. “The murder at that warehouse involved pyria. If our suspect in custody can’t make it himself, he knows who can.”

“Murder?” I asked, alarmed.

“I forget that things happen here that you don’t hear about,” said Glisselda. “Comonot established a dragon garrison shortly after you left. He called it ‘a large gesture of good faith.’ He said that several times, in case there was any mistaking.”

I was glad he’d taken my advice and unsurprised by the ham-handed execution.

“It’s gone over badly,” said Kiggs. “The Sons of St. Ogdo are crawling out of their ratholes again. Protests, mostly, but also one violent riot, saarantrai assaulted, and a female dragon officer missing. We found her burned body in a warehouse by the river.”

I closed my eyes, sickened. The Sons of St. Ogdo were a clandestine brotherhood of fanatical dragon-haters. Half the trouble at midwinter had been their fault; they so despised dragonkind that they were easily persuaded—by the dragon Imlann, in human form—to participate in the assassination attempts against Comonot. Lars’s estranged brother, Josef, Earl of Apsig, had been in the thick of things; he’d returned to Samsam in the end, tail between his legs, humiliated to learn he’d done the bidding of a dragon.

“His large gesture of good faith has been a large headache for the city watch,” said Kiggs.

“He meant well,” said Glisselda. It was the first time I’d heard her defend Comonot’s clumsy efforts. “Anyway, the Sons of St. Ogdo won’t get away with murdering saarantrai. You know what a dogged investigator Lucian is. We’ll take whatever steps are necessary to keep the peace.”

“Comonot’s Loyalists are our allies: that’s the reality,” said Kiggs. “Goredd must learn to adjust.”

“Of course,” I said weakly. “I know you have it well in hand.”

When our conversation finished, however, I lay on the bed a long time with my arm over my eyes, feeling dully disappointed. I don’t know what I had imagined would happen in Goredd after I told the truth about my origins and revealed my scales. Did I expect the Sons of St. Ogdo to dissolve into dust, or that Goreddis would learn in four months the kind of trust they hadn’t learned in forty years?

Of course that was impossible. That didn’t stop me from wishing I could change the attitudes of Goreddis single-handedly, reach in and make people see sense.



The members of our Ninysh escort, despite Josquin’s protestations to the contrary, were not entirely sanguine about accompanying half-dragons. They concealed their feelings behind their professionalism, for the most part, but the longer we traveled, the more slips I began to notice. Once I noticed, I couldn’t unsee.

Some of the Eight made St. Ogdo’s sign if Abdo or I came too near. It was a subtle gesture intended to ward off the evil of dragons, just a circle made with thumb and finger. At first I thought I’d imagined it. The soldier saddling our horses seemed to make the sign over the beast’s withers, but when I looked straight at him, he wasn’t doing it. One soldier may have made it over her heart after I spoke to her, or did she have an itch?

Then there was the day Nan bought a bundle of barley twigs—slender, crunchy breadsticks, which Abdo loved—and Abdo reached right in and took three. Two of our soldiers, who had ridden up eagerly, now hesitated, reluctant to take any. Finally one of them made St. Ogdo’s sign, as unobtrusively as he could. Abdo saw it and froze mid-chew; he’d spent enough time in Goredd to know the gesture.

Nan saw the sign and went incandescent. She flung the remaining barley twigs to the ground, leaped from her horse, and pulled her comrade headfirst off his. She went at him, fists flying. Moy had to break it up.

Nan ended up with a split lip, but she’d given the other fellow a black eye. Her father imposed some kind of discipline on them both; I didn’t have enough Ninysh to understand, but Josquin paled. Nan seemed not to care. She returned to us, patted Abdo’s horse, and said huskily, “Do not take zis to heart, moush.”

Moush, meaning “gnat,” was her nickname for Abdo. Abdo nodded, his eyes wide.

I was the one who took it to heart.

I could not be completely comfortable now. It galled me to play my flute in the evenings. Josquin noticed the change, but if he fathomed the cause, he gave me no indication. “You’re a herald, not a circus bear,” he said one evening. “You can say no.”

But I didn’t say no. Playing flute was the one thing I knew could make people see a human, not a monster.



The eastern mountains came into view over the course of a week. I mistook them for a bank of clouds at first. As we traveled nearer, I discerned snowy peaks and a dark forest spreading at their feet like a stain. The legendary Pinabra.

We arrived in Meshi two days later. It stood at the border of the forest, along a river that divided the plains from the pines, western produce from eastern timber and ore. The crenellated turrets of Palasho Meshi rose at the center of town. The baronet was one of the more important Ninysh lordlings, supplying two crucial ingredients for pyria: sulfur and pine resin. We would be imposing on his hospitality for the night.

It was near noon, however, when we passed the city gates. Too early to call in at the palasho. “Let’s go to St. Fionnuala’s and ask the priest about his mural painter,” I suggested to Josquin.