Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(32)

He was right, of course. I could have quoted the relevant lines of scripture, and it was St. Abaster’s dragon-killing trap we were trying to re-create. I had no illusions about this order’s friendliness toward my kind.

“Just keep quiet and take care,” said Josquin. “The Samsamese aren’t as tolerant as we Ninysh.”

As you Ninysh believe yourselves to be, said Abdo, echoing my thoughts.

Above us, something hurtled over the ledge. We stepped back reflexively, but it was a rope ladder, unrolling as it fell. The lowest rungs didn’t touch the ground. Josquin handed me Count Pesavolta’s scrip, the promised reward; I tucked it into my doublet and started to climb. The ladder swung, grinding against the limestone, making the rungs hard to grasp. My knuckles were thoroughly chafed by the time I reached the top. Two brown-robed monks grabbed my elbows and hauled me up.

The porch resembled a shallow, flat-bottomed cave with four decorative columns placed at intervals across its wide mouth. The monks had shaved their heads in a peculiar tonsure, bald but for a square patch at the crown. They wiped their gloved hands uneasily on their cassocks, as if I had contaminated them. I wordlessly followed them toward the back of the cave, through an oaken door reinforced with iron bands, and up a torch-lit corridor into the rocky heart of the cliff. The arched doors along the corridor were closed; it was eerily quiet. Perhaps St. Abaster’s was a silent order.

At the end of the corridor, a stone staircase spiraled up into darkness. One monk took a torch from its wall sconce, handed it over, and pointed. These two clearly did not intend to accompany me any further. I hesitated, then mounted the steep stairs.

I climbed five or six stories at least, and was dizzy and lightly winded when I reached a heavy door at the end. A light push didn’t budge it. I leaned into it with all my weight, and it groaned open into an airy and painfully bright chamber. I blinked and squinted until I discerned tall, glazed windows, a tile floor, wrought-iron candelabra, scaffolding. This was a freestanding octagonal chapel at the top of the bluffs.

I set my torch in a sconce beside the door and looked around for Od Fredricka. Upon the scaffolding perched a woman sketching on the bare plaster, a chunk of charcoal in her hand. She had already drawn an oval as tall as she was, a bulbous nose with flaring nostrils, a curving mouth, and long-lobed ears. I watched her add a pair of cruel eyes.

Oh, those eyes. I could tell I would be seeing them in uncomfortable dreams. They seemed to bore into me and find me wanting.

The artist took a step back and scrutinized her work, wiping her hands on her smock, leaving distinct charcoal handprints on her backside. A light shawl covered her head, hiding her most distinctive half-dragon feature, but I knew she must be Od Fredricka. Even in this bare-bones sketch, I could see the shadow of the realism and power to come, an echo of her other paintings.

Without turning around, she began speaking in a clear, light voice, apparently to me. She would have heard the door complain as I opened it. Alas for my dreadful Ninysh. I could tell she was saying something about St. Abaster, but nothing more.

“Pallez-dit Gordiano?” I called, asking if she spoke my language and undoubtedly butchering the pronunciation.

She glanced over her shoulder, a sneer on her freckled face. “Nen. Samsamya?”

My Samsamese was passable. “What were you saying?” I asked.

She began climbing down the scaffolding, stiffly, like an arthritic old woman. “That I always read the scriptures before I draw a Saint.”

“Oh,” I said. “That sounds sensible.”

“History has become smudged over six hundred years. Only the Saints’ own words have come down to us,” she said, still climbing. “Edicts, precepts, philosophies. Lies. None of them wrote as much as St. Abaster, and what a monstruoigo he was.”

That lone word of Ninysh was easy to guess.

“Look at him,” she said, pausing to gaze back up at her drawing. “He hates you.”

His eyes certainly seemed to. I shuddered.

“He hates us all,” she continued, resuming her labored descent. “He pulled dragons out of the sky with his mind and killed five of his fellow Saints. Samsam hopes he will return someday. Should this worry us?”

She reached the ground at last and pulled off her head covering. I knew what I would see, but it was still a shock: her scalp was shingled with silver scales, like some horrifying case of cradle cap. Her violently red hair tufted through the gaps wherever it could, standing straight up like a hedge.

She was tall and stout, her smock flecked in blues and greens and just enough red to make you wonder. Her round baby face contradicted her matronly bosom, making it hard to guess her age, but I believed she was about thirty. She sauntered toward me, casually drawing a knife from her pocket and cleaning her grimy nails with it.

“So,” said Od Fredricka, “why would Count Pesavolta send a Goreddi? What is his devilish scheme?” I opened my mouth to reassure her, but she cut me off. “It doesn’t matter. I have fulfilled his condition. Now give me my money.”

I handed over the promissory note Josquin had given me. She gave it a cursory glance, crumpled it, and tossed it onto the floor. “I would have to go into a large town to exchange that.”

I stooped to retrieve the note. She kicked it out of reach.

“Why is Count Pesavolta looking for me?” she said, stepping around me in a circle, still holding the knife. “Not for a neighborly glass of pine brandy. He wants something. If I spend his note, his men will seize me.”