Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(64)

I started, alarmed that she knew where Orma was; she smirked, then leaned in and whispered, “Abdo had an interesting and relevant memory when Josef was examining your pearl ring yesterday. I visited his mind while he was sleeping and found it.”

She tried to shove me toward the dinghy. I resisted, crying, “What are you trying to accomplish here? Why Josef?”

She eased off pushing. “There is no end to your questions. Here I am, helping you along, and you still won’t trust me. What will it take, Seraphina?”

“That’s easy. Release Abdo, Dame Okra, and everyone else whose minds you’ve caught on your hooks, and I’ll consider—”

She shoved me hard, and suddenly there was no embankment below my feet. I fell toward the sea, and her eyes widened as if she were surprised to have unbalanced me.

I landed hard in Ingar’s lap, making the boat buck and violently throw up spray. Ingar, looking mildly astonished, squeaked, “Oh!” Abdo helped me right myself, but I pulled away from him and stood up in the tilting, rocking boat. I shouted at Jannoula, “I’m going to Porphyry for my Queen, not for you. I’m not helping you!”

Jannoula turned her back on me and stiffly climbed the stairs toward the castle, its spires dark against the lightening sky.



The ship was a two-masted Porphyrian merchanteer anchored far out in the water. Ingar had vouchers for our passage, all in order, and so the sailors hauled us up one by one in a sling chair. Abdo pushed off the side of the ship with his feet, so he spun as he ascended; Ingar bumped his way up like a lumpy sack of grain.

I hated to admit Jannoula was helping, but she had gotten us out of Blystane quickly, and at the Regent’s expense. Regardless of her reasons—which I could not possibly trust—we were on our way. This was the final leg of our search. I would find the seven ityasaari in Porphyry, locate my awful uncle, as Jannoula called him, and return home at last.

Home. The word seemed to echo in my heart. I wanted nothing in the world so much as that. Even thoughts of Orma didn’t buoy me the way they usually did.

Abdo missed his home, too, I knew. Simply being on a ship among Porphyrians, listening to them talk, seemed to cheer him immensely. He bounded around the deck, eager to explore; Ingar gamely followed him. I questioned a sailor in my shaky Porphyrian; he eventually understood and led me down a claustrophobic corridor beneath the forecastle to the single, cramped cabin where the three of us would board.

I thanked the man, who departed for his duties, and then I learned the crucial importance of ducking through doorways.

The cabin, I discovered once I’d managed to enter without braining myself, had three narrow bunks: an upper and lower built into the left-hand wall and one to the right atop a chest of drawers. I claimed the lower left bunk for myself, assuming Abdo would want the top. Ingar could sleep by himself across the room, all of two feet away. I peevishly kicked his empty bunk. I did not want him here; maybe he’d fall in the ocean. I sprawled crookedly, keeping my boots off the scratchy coverlet, and felt the ship roll beneath me.

A feeling rolled inside me, too. I didn’t want to look at it.

My entire expedition seemed to have gone wrong. It had started so wonderfully, with Nedouard and Blanche; I felt they were kindred spirits, and that I’d truly done some good for them. Everything had slowly disintegrated since then. Casually lethal Gianni Patto. Mean Od Fredricka, forced into friendliness through Jannoula’s manipulations. The seizing of Dame Okra and Abdo.

Jannoula, still barred from my head, was free from her old prison, walking the world, and entering the minds of others. She could do all kinds of damage now. Hateful Earl Josef, who’d partly credited her with his ascension, might be only the beginning.

I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes. She wanted me to bring the Porphyrian ityasaari back to Goredd to join the others. How in good conscience could I even ask them, not knowing what she had in mind? Even if Kiggs and Glisselda stopped her bodily at the Goreddi border and locked her up, did it matter where she was if she could reach everyone with her mind?

Ingar entered the cabin. “Oh, excuse. You were nepping?” His accent was as hard as cold butter.

I rolled onto my side, turning my back on him. I had no desire to talk to Jannoula’s spy, but he kept talking to me. “I am, eh, so fery pleased to mit you. It is egzekly like she toldt me. Soon together we shell be!”

I looked at him over my shoulder. A vapid smile split Ingar’s fat face. His bovine brown eyes drifted vacantly behind square lenses; his moony pale head reflected the blue gleam from the porthole. Perhaps this spy could cut both ways.

“What else does Jannoula say?” I asked, sitting up carefully.

“Wonderfool thingks about you, always!” he cried, his doughy hands gesticulating his enthusiasm. “You are her favorite, and thet is a great blessink upon you.”


I was her favorite. My stomach turned. I said, “How long have you known her?”

“Four years,” he said, looking shyly at his feet, as if I’d asked him how long he’d loved her. Maybe I had. He added, “But we only mit—meet? Is more correct?” I nodded, and he continued: “I hev meet her for the first time two months ago. Before thet … no, that. Before that, I only speak to her in my head. You understand.”

“I do,” I said, but I was silently calculating. Four years meant soon after I’d locked her avatar in the Wee Cottage and shut her out of my mind. She hadn’t stayed lonely long. “How did she find you four years ago?”