Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(31)

Blanche balked at the sight of the carriage, but Abdo took her hand in his and led her around the coach. They examined the wheels and springs. She whimpered at the horses, but Abdo patiently showed her how they were hitched up and couldn’t get to her. He patted one horse’s velvet nose. Blanche came no closer, but her suspicious squint eased a little.

She has to hold the carriage with her mind, Abdo explained to me. She touches things with her soul-light and makes them a part of herself. I wish you could see how the whole thing glows. I bet she could move it without the horses.

Old Folla popped his head out of the carriage, and Blanche gasped in surprise and clutched at Abdo. The lad smiled exaggeratedly, as if showing her a better way to react to Folla. She nodded, violet eyes solemn, and then spoke a laugh: “Ha. Ha.”

Blanche stepped toward me, not meeting my eyes, and gave courtesy like a noblewoman. “Thank you,” she said in carefully enunciated Goreddi.

Why is she thanking me? I asked Abdo in confusion.

She’s been alone out here for thirty years, said Abdo, patting Blanche’s hand. Since she was a child and her scales came in and her mother’s husband—Lord Meshi himself—threw her out of the house.

Blanche took one last, regretful look back toward the ridge, then leaned down and kissed Abdo’s forehead. Abdo, never taking his eyes off her, handed her into the carriage.

I wish I could go with her, said Abdo fretfully as the carriage rolled away.

I need you here, I said.

Blanche’s ghostly face appeared in the carriage’s back window. Abdo waved. She speaks five languages; she hid them down deep because she had no one to talk to. She was loved once, and educated, and then thrown away like garbage.

I watched the carriage disappear around a bend in the road and felt a pang. There but for the grace of Allsaints went any of us, even here in Ninys. It was wonderful that we could help her; this was exactly what I had hoped to accomplish.

Abdo wriggled his hand into mine and smiled encouragingly up at me. Come along, madamina. We still have a painter to find.



I contacted Dame Okra over the thnik that night, for the first time, to let her know Blanche was coming. “Congratulations on finding another one,” drawled Dame Okra. “I didn’t think you could. Nedouard and I have a bet on. He wins only if you find both.”

“You’re getting along with him better now, I hope,” I said.

She snorted. “I recovered my spoons, at least. Since he’s under my roof now, I can steal everything back while he’s out. He doesn’t sell my silver, just magpies it away in the crannies of his room.”

I rubbed my forehead in perplexity but inquired no further. She’d found a way to make peace with him; that would have to be good enough.

My companions and I plunged onward through the Pinabra and four days later reached Vaillou, a woodcutters’ village on sandy bottomland. St. Jobertus’s shrine, erected over a sacred spring, was the largest building. Across the chapel’s pinewood ceiling, in purples and greens, a mural showed Jobertus healing the sick and aiding the poor. His compassionate eyes reminded me startlingly of Nedouard’s.

She’d finished her work here and moved on.

A priest crept up silently and spoke to Josquin. I caught Count Pesavolta’s name. The priest rummaged in his violet cassock and handed a scrap of palimpsest to Josquin.

“I wondered when the message I sent ahead would pay off,” Josquin said, crossing the chapel toward me, “but I never anticipated this. Listen: ‘I hear there’s a reward for information leading to my whereabouts. I’m at Montesanti Monastery. Bring the money, or don’t come at all.’ ” Josquin tapped the parchment against his hand. “That’s a bit unfriendly.”

“Do you know the monastery she mentions?” I asked.

“Indeed,” he said, pursing his lips. “It’s famous, although I’ve never been up there. The rock is a daunting climb, and they don’t lower the ladder for just anyone.”

I was thrilled to have such a definite lead, and feeling quite confident after Nedouard and Blanche, despite the tone of Od Fredricka’s note. Three days passed quickly, over hilly, piney ground, until we arrived at the base of a weathered cliff.

“This is it,” said Josquin, shading his eyes to look up. “The monastery was carved into the living rock. There’s the entrance porch.”

I made out what looked like a colonnaded cave entrance, halfway up the bluff.

Ye gods, said Abdo, standing on his horse. I see her. She shines ferociously.

Two ropes dangled from the entrance. Moy tugged on one, and a bell tinkled a long way off. From the other rope hung a slate and chalk; Josquin wrote in Ninysh, We’re here for Od Fredricka. Two pale monks, summoned by the bell, peered down at us; they reeled up the slate, bumping it against limestone outcroppings, vines, and gnarled roots.

After several minutes, they sent the slate back down. One may ascend. No more.

“I should go,” I said. Josquin frowned at this; Captain Moy muttered and shifted uneasily. “They’re just monks,” I said, folding my arms. “They’re not going to hurt me.”

“It’s St. Abaster’s Order, a Samsamese import,” said Moy. “Stricter than our homegrown brothers. They won’t welcome a woman, or a …” He gestured at my wrist. My scales were hidden under my long-sleeved doublet, but I rubbed my arm self-consciously.