Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(73)

I was fascinated and lightly horrified. This kind of thing could get you burned for heresy in Samsam, or so I’d heard. In Goredd … well, no one would believe him. He was a dragon. He admitted to guessing. His argument was a colossal house of cards, and I awaited the inevitable breeze that would knock it down. Instead, I found this:

The testament is more complete and revealing than I could have hoped. I see why the old priest would have sent it here once he saw what it contained. He didn’t dare destroy a holy relic, but he couldn’t let anyone else know it existed, let alone read it. There is no better hiding place than this library, I think.



Did he mean the bound manuscript tucked in with his notes? I opened it roughly; the spine cracked, chiding me. Its antique pages were as brittle as leaf pastry, and I didn’t dare touch them, but I saw that the booklet was written in an alphabet I didn’t know.

A librarian circled the courtyard, banging a gong. I’d been here for hours; the Bibliagathon was closing in ten minutes. It seemed Orma wasn’t coming today, and that the time I’d spent reading his notes might have been better spent seeking Paulos Pende at the temple. There was a bundle of charcoal pencils on the lectern for scholars; I used one to scrawl Naia’s address and Find me! at the end of Orma’s notes, then wedged the pages and testament back into the larger book. I could check back regularly while still seeking out the ityasaari. I drifted outside, preoccupied by my plans, and descended the marble steps.

Should I wait for Ingar? Eh. He could find his own way home.

At the bottom of the stairs, four liveried men set down a litter they were carrying. A jeweled hand parted the curtains, and a statuesque woman emerged, dressed in an exquisite saffron gown, pleated and high-waisted. Her strong shoulders were bared to the breeze; the hair piled high on her head was almost architecturally elaborate, with a gold circlet woven through it.

The circlet meant she was of the Agogoi. Abdo had said it was like the stripes on a bee: a warning. This one has the power to sting you.

The woman walked toward me, the wooden soles of her sandals clacking on the stairs. I judged her ten years my senior and, when she reached me, half a head taller. I’m not short. I tried not to stare up at her.

She said in crisp and resonant Goreddi: “You are Seraphina Dombegh.”

My first instinct was to curtsy, but I wasn’t even wearing a skirt; I was dressed like a workingwoman from the harborside, in the tunic and trousers I’d bought yesterday. Porphyrians did not shake hands. I bowed as my last resort. The woman did not smile.

“I am Zythia Perdixis Camba,” she said solemnly. “You should call me—”

“Camba,” I said, eager to show that Abdo had taught me correct address. Of course, I’d interrupted her with my good manners.

“Paulos Pende sent me to find you,” she said.

“Indeed,” I said, pleased to think my day had not been a waste after all, even if it was spooky that this priest knew I was in the city—knew my name, even.

Camba glanced toward the library doors. “I am to wait for your companion also.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I began, but then, as if on cue, Ingar appeared at the top of the stairs, a librarian at each of his elbows and a third gently prying books out of his hands.

Camba eyed Ingar’s stout, hunchbacked form skeptically. “He is ityasaari, too?”

I nodded. It was so strange to hear someone speak casually of ityasaari, as if we were nothing unusual. I supposed that if she knew Pende well, she’d be accustomed to us.

But how did Pende know?

Ingar began descending the stairs with a smile on his moony face. His brows shot up at the sight of Camba. She addressed him in Goreddi: “Greetings, friend. I am to bring you to Paulos Pende.”

Ingar stared at her bug-eyed, as if he’d forgotten every language he knew. Then he turned and scuttled back up the stairs. I called after him, confused, until I realized that maybe he wouldn’t want to meet with Pende. Abdo had said Pende routinely pulled Jannoula out of people’s minds; I couldn’t see Ingar submitting to that willingly.

Camba gestured a wordless order, and two of her litter-bearers rushed after Ingar.

Ingar, at the top of the steps, frantically ripped off his doublet and pulled his linen shirt over his head, revealing his pale, sagging torso. I saw he’d smuggled out a book between his vestigial wings, the rapscallion. The book thudded onto the steps behind him as he stretched his wings wide.

He stretched them wider.

Maybe they weren’t so vestigial after all.

His pursuers stopped to stare at the silvery wings, membranous like a dragon’s. Ingar took a running jump toward the wall of the library, flapping his wings as elegantly and effectively as a frightened chicken. Still, he gained enough elevation to scramble up the side of the building, grab the edge of the roof, and haul himself over.

Once on the roof, he stood huffing and puffing with his hands on his knees. Whatever else was true, he was still a fat old bookhound.

Camba kicked off her sandals and strode purposefully toward the high library wall. She studied the surface for handholds and then, agile as a cat, climbed up after him.

She was remarkably strong, and it crossed my mind that she might be an ityasaari herself. But I had never seen Camba in visions; she did not exist in my garden of grotesques. Did I not see them all?

Camba reached Ingar and then, heedless of her honeycombed hair, threw him over her shoulder like a sack of sand and climbed back down with him. Ingar flopped around, shouting, but Camba hauled him back to the litter, as unconcerned as if this were her job every day.