Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(7)

I have reason to think that you and other half-dragons can thread your minds together. “Like beads on a string,” it has been described. In so doing, you will find you can make a barrier in the air, an unseen wall, strong enough to stop a dragon midflight. “Like a bird against a window,” according to my source, who has more flair for description than I. You will be astonished to learn who it is.

The process will require practice. The more ityasaari on your string, the stronger the barrier. The uses should be obvious. I urge haste in finding your fellows before the war comes south. Unless you give up prematurely, your search will bring you here.

All in ard,

O



While I read, Eskar proclaimed herself tired. Glisselda escorted her to the anteroom and roused the dozy page boy, who led Eskar to her quarters. I was hazily aware of this, and of Lucian Kiggs watching me while I read. When I finished the letter, I looked up and met the prince’s dark, questioning eyes.

I tried to smile reassuringly, but the letter had produced such a riot of emotions in me that I felt only the struggle between them. It was bittersweet hearing from Orma, all my love bound up in sorrow for his exile. His proposal, on the other hand, fascinated and horrified me. I had longed to find the others of my kind, but I’d had a frightening experience early on with another half-dragon invading my mind. Just the idea of another mind threaded to mine made me squirm.

“I’ll be interested in what Comonot makes of her plan,” said Queen Glisselda, returning to her seat. “Surely he’s thought of this and rejected it. And there is still a great deal of risk to Goredd if he pleads his case and fails.” Her blue eyes darted back and forth between Kiggs and me. “You’re making strange faces. What did I miss?”

“Orma has had an idea,” I said, handing her the letter. Glisselda held the page, and Kiggs read over her shoulder, their dark and golden heads together.

“What is he researching?” said Kiggs, looking at me over Glisselda’s bowed head.

“Historical references to half-dragons,” I said. “My strangeness, in part, got him obsessed with learning whether there had been others.” I’d told them about my garden of grotesques; they had some idea what I meant by strangeness.

“In part?” asked Kiggs, catching the qualifier at once. He was too sharp by half; I had to look away, or my smile was going to reveal things it shouldn’t.

“Orma also found it irritatingly illogical that there are no records of interbreeding in the dragon archives and no mention in Goreddi literature. The Saints mention ‘abominations,’ and there are laws forbidding cohabitation, but that’s it. He thought surely someone, somewhere, would have tried the experiment and recorded the results.”

Talk of dragon “experimentation” produces an odd facial expression in humans, halfway between amused and appalled. The Queen and prince were no exceptions.

I continued, “The Porphyrians have a word for what I am—ityasaari—and Orma had heard rumors that Porphyrians might be more open to the possibility of …” I trailed off. Even now, when everyone knew about me, it was hard to talk about the practical mechanics of my parentage. “He hoped they might have some useful records.”

“He seems to have been right,” said Glisselda, scanning the letter again. She turned to me and smiled, patting Eskar’s empty chair. I shifted one seat closer to the royal cousins. “What do you make of this ‘unseen wall’ idea?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I can’t picture it.”

“It would be like St. Abaster’s Trap,” said Kiggs. I stared at him incredulously; he smiled, enjoying that. “Am I the only one who reads scripture? St. Abaster could harness the fires of Heaven to make a shining net with which he pulled dragons out of the sky.”

I groaned. “I stopped reading St. Abaster when I got to ‘Women of the South, take not the worm to thy beds, for thusly wilt thou bear thine own damnation.’ ”

Kiggs blinked slowly, as at a dawning realization. “That’s not even the worst thing he says about dragons or … or …”

“And he’s not alone,” I said. “St. Ogdo, St. Vitt. Orma once extracted the worst parts and made me a pamphlet. Reading St. Abaster, in particular, is like being slapped.”

“But will you attempt this mind-threading?” Queen Glisselda said with barely concealed hope. “If there’s any chance it could spare our city …”

I shuddered, but covered it with exaggerated nodding. “I’ll talk to the others.” Abdo especially had some unique abilities. I’d start with him.

Glisselda took my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Seraphina. And not only for this.” Her smile grew shy, or perhaps apologetic. “It’s been a hard winter, with assassins burning down neighborhoods, Comonot being Comonot, and Grandmamma so ill. She never intended me to be Queen at fifteen.”

“She may yet recover,” said Kiggs gently. “And you’re not much younger than she was when she and Comonot authored the peace.”

Glisselda extended her other hand toward him; he took it. “Dear Lucian. Thank you, too.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glittering in the firelight. “You’ve both been so important to me. The Crown consumes me, I sometimes feel, until I am only Queen. I don’t get to be Glisselda except with you, Lucian, or”—she squeezed my hand again—“at my harpsichord lesson. I need that. I’m sorry I don’t practice more.”