Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(48)

Gianni Patto had gone slack and stupid and docile again. The Eight, who had swarmed him, shouted blue murder and waved their blades in his face; Gianni didn’t flinch or defend himself. He made no squeak of protest when they knocked him down and began to kick him.

“Stop,” I said, too feebly to be effective. “Stop!” I shouted louder, rushing up to Nan and tugging on her arm. She glanced at me, and my face was enough. She pulled the woman next to her off Gianni, and then the pair put a quick halt to the kicking. The soldiers stepped back, breathing heavily; tears streaked more faces than just mine.

Gianni Patto raised his face from the paving stones; his icy eyes met mine with a gaze of such piercing lucidity that I staggered back as if struck. He smiled eerily.

For a moment I feared I might vomit.

“Fee-naaaah!” Gianni’s voice rumbled like thunder.

“Take him away,” I said, averting my eyes. “And for Heaven’s sake, be careful.”

They hobbled his ankles and strapped his arms to his sides; he rose, awkward and unresisting, and followed them into the city, his taloned feet scratching and chattering on the stones.

Dame Okra, strangely, had neither dismounted nor moved; she stared intently into the darkness, breathing hard. Her forehead glistened with sweat and her eyes bulged.

I shakily mounted my horse, trying to slow my jittering heart. It had happened so fast. “He isn’t usually like this,” I said numbly, as if that might reassure Dame Okra or myself. I knew what must have happened. Jannoula had surely been present in him again. Had she made Gianni scream? Had she hurt him? What was she up to? I couldn’t begin to think; dread clung to me like a wet blanket.

“Eh?” said Dame Okra abruptly, as if startling awake. “Did you say something?”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, out of words. Dame Okra hadn’t even reacted to Josquin’s injury; she was mean, but not usually that mean.

“Then let’s get back to the house. I have a most fearsome headache, and it’s late,” she snapped accusingly, as if I were the one keeping her out past her bedtime.

She spurred her donkey forward, not bothering to see whether I followed.



I didn’t sleep. I couldn’t. I paced Dame Okra’s green guest room until the sun came up.

It had never occurred to me, not once, that in seeking out the ityasaari there might be a price to pay beyond the time, effort, and resources spent finding them. The death of the monk, even if he deserved it, was too high a price. Abdo’s wrist was too high a price. Josquin’s spine … I could barely think about that. It filled me with despair.

On top of all that, my search had attracted Jannoula’s notice. Had she provoked Gianni to kill the monk? Had Gianni been screaming for my attention when he spooked Josquin’s horse? She’d said she could help me search; I didn’t need this kind of help.

I didn’t know what to do. The thought of continuing the search made me nauseated. I wanted to give it up, go home, hide away from everyone. But then this terrible toll really would have been exacted in vain. Surely it was up to me to make these sacrifices mean something.

I flopped back on the bed, the weight of my thoughts pinning me down. The birds were singing as I fell asleep.

It was noon, at least, by the time I awoke; I could tell by the sun through the windows. I washed and dressed, a resolution growing in my mind: we couldn’t take Gianni Patto back to Goredd. Maybe he would have been violent and unpredictable even if he hadn’t been riddled with Jannoula, but I couldn’t help believing she’d influenced him. I did not want Gianni Patto carrying her anywhere near my home or the people I loved. I had felt that way in Donques; I never should have let Josquin persuade me otherwise. I was going to tell Dame Okra, and she would tell Count Pesavolta to keep the creature—and thereby Jannoula—locked up.

The creature. That was unfair. I knew it, but I couldn’t bear to think of him any other way just now.

I had accidentally neglected my garden the night before; Abdo had suggested I try such a thing. It hurt to think about Abdo. I considered tending to it now, but the grotesques weren’t riled up, clearly, or I would have had a headache.

If they didn’t need me, I didn’t feel like visiting. I’d only have been there to soothe myself, and it niggled at me that maybe that was what I’d been doing all along. Maybe the garden had always been about me.

I staggered downstairs. Nedouard and Blanche sat in Dame Okra’s formal dining room, side by side in comradely silence. Surgical tools, metal scraps, and dirty dishes were spread before them across the pristine white tablecloth between two incongruous bouquets of lilacs. Blanche, who had been coiling copper wire around an iron rod, smiled enormously when she saw me and leaped to her feet. She looked healthier; there was some pink in her cheeks, and her scales looked shinier and less like scabs. She’d acquired a pale green gown, and even it seemed more solid than what she’d worn before. “Hey hey you wanting it breakfast I can to make it at you,” she said in an astonishing deluge of Goreddi. “Kitchen is all food.”

I was overwhelmed by her sweetness and joy, and had to swallow hard before I could answer. Maybe we’d done a few things worth doing after all. “I’m not hungry, thank you,” I managed to say. Blanche looked dumbfounded by the notion of “not hungry,” but she plopped back down and resumed winding wire.