Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(81)

“Hello!” I called, and then more properly in Porphyrian, “I greet you as the ocean greets the morning sun.”

Her eyes glittered with amusement, or possibly malice. Her mouth, a thin line, was hard to read. She spread her wings and launched herself into the sky.

She was so elegant in flight that she took my breath with her.



I reached Metasaari an hour later. A buttress jutted out of the mountain, separating the two halves of the city at the top, so I’d had to return to the harbor, go east, and then climb back uphill. The eastern heights, like the western, grew wealthier the higher one went. There were fewer apartment blocks here and more single dwellings, some with colorful marble facades or fluted columns. Trees lined the streets, dark cedars and pollarded sycamores with whitewashed trunks. I reached a large park with a public fountain where women were gossiping, water jugs on their hips. Fruit and nut vendors stalked the perimeter with carts; servants scurried past, feet slapping the flagstone street.

This park, according to the librarians’ map, was the heart of Metasaari. It was a far cry from Quighole, our dismal saar ghetto back home.

But where were the dragons? I saw no one with my sallow complexion. The people here, conversing in the shade of the stunted sycamores, pushing handcarts up the hill, were all brown-skinned Porphyrians.

I stopped at a corner caupona, where food bubbled in great pots built right into the counter. They had eggplant stew and octopus balls in gravy—tastier than it sounds—but I wasn’t there to eat. I lined up behind a thin and apparently hungry man who ordered a lot of everything; he finally shuffled off to an outdoor table, balancing a heaped bowl in each hand, and I stepped up to the counter.

“Excuse,” I said to the shriveled proprietress. “Does your mouth speak Goreddi?”

She waved her ladle impatiently and said in Porphyrian, “What’re you having?”

“One glass tea,” I managed, fumbling for a coin in my little purse. “No Goreddi? It is fair. I try more. Do you see saarantrai in circle of this park?”

She shook her head and muttered, “Foreign fool,” as she handed me my change. I turned, mortified, toward the patio tables. “You forgot your tea!” the woman called after me. I retrieved it; the cup rattled against the saucer.

“Excuse me,” said a low, pleasant voice, the thin man who’d stood ahead of me in line. He was sitting at a patio table, waving a large hand in case I didn’t see him. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said in Goreddi, “but I speak your language. Can I help?”

I hesitated, then set my tea on his table and pulled up a chair. He hailed the caupona owner, who grumblingly brought him spiced wine. “She’s rude to everyone,” he stage-whispered. “It’s part of her charm.”

Small spectacles perched upon his long, straight nose, and he had pulled his long, straight hair into a Ninysh-style ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore a short Goreddi houppelande over Porphyrian trousers. Clearly he was a man who traveled.

“Have you been to Goredd?” I asked, swallowing my rising homesickness.

“I lived there for years,” said the man warmly. He held out a hand. “I’m Lalo.”

“Seraphina,” I said, shaking his hand, another curious memento of home.

“I heard you’re looking for dragons?” he said, digging into his bowl of octopus.

I took a sip of scalding tea. It was unexpectedly minty. “I am. There’s supposed to be a community of exiles here.”

“That’s right,” said Lalo. “Metasaari. This is it.”

I looked at the other caupona patrons, the women beside the fountain, the fruit vendors and pedestrians, and saw only Porphyrians. “Where are the saarantrai?”

He laughed. The sun glinted on his teeth. “All around you, hatchling. I am one.”


I almost choked on my tea. I stared at Lalo’s face, his easy grin, his dark skin. Saints in Heaven. He was like no dragon I’d ever met.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I know what you’re thinking. You’ve only ever seen saarantrai the color of cave fish, but brown is our default shade. Look.” He splayed his large hand on the tiled tabletop. Before my very eyes, the skin of his hand lightened until it was almost as pale as my own, and then it darkened again.

I was too astonished to speak.

“Silver blood,” he explained. “If we bring it to the surface, we pale. This sort of camouflage is useful in our natural habitat, where the biggest danger is other dragons, or in the Southlands, where we don’t dare stand out too much.”

Embarrassingly, I had noted the skin color of the people in this neighborhood and then considered the matter no further. Looking out at Metasaari now, I saw what my assumptions had blinded me to: a subtle angularity, more muted colors of clothing, no ornaments, and short, practical hairstyles. The fruit vendors didn’t shout or sing about their wares; the fountain’s gurgling was louder than the women’s gossiping. If these were saarantrai, they were more subdued than their Porphyrian counterparts.

Still, Lalo grinned. These were not quite saarantrai as I’d known them in Goredd, either.

Orma would likely be dark-skinned here. Could I have walked past without seeing him? I had asked the librarians whether they’d seen a foreigner, presumably pale like me.