Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(82)

“Are you looking for someone specific?” said Lalo, starting in on his eggplant.

I took another sip of tea. “His name is Orma.”

“Son of Imlann and Eri? Brother of Linn?”

My heart leaped. “Yes! You’ve seen him?”

Lalo shook his head. “Not for years. I was at university with his sister.”

Orma had surely been cautious, even of other dragons; that was no surprise. I tried a different angle. “He’s with another dragon, called Eskar.”

“Eskar, yes. She’s been here for several months,” he said, wagging his spoon at me. He added in a quieter voice, “She’s trying to get us home to the Tanamoot. Not everyone thinks it wise. For my part, I’m no fighter, but I’ll do what it takes to get back. I’ve found nothing but heartbreak here.”

“Why were you exiled?” I said, instinctively matching his quietness.

Lalo sighed, disconcertingly melancholy, and scraped up the last of his octopus gravy with his spoon. “I wasn’t. I fell in love with a Goreddi woman and went home for excision like a good little saar.” He took a gulp of wine and gazed up at the cloudless sky. “In a fit of romantic stupidity, however, I made myself a mind-pearl before I went.”

I knew a bit about mind-pearls, a way dragons had of encapsulating memories and hiding them; my mother had left some in my mind, which I’d never suspected until the sight of Orma in his natural shape had triggered them to open. The trigger could be anything.

I twisted the pearl ring on my pinkie, suddenly wondering what Orma had meant by The thing itself plus nothing equals everything. Had he made himself a mind-pearl? Was that what he was trying to tell me?

Lalo’s gaze had grown distant. “I wanted to keep those days alive inside me even if I couldn’t remember them. I purposefully forgot how to trigger my mind-pearl, because I never intended to do it. Alas, I tripped over that forgotten trigger, remembered all, found her again, and … she’d moved on. She’s married, and here I am, stuck with my sorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, finding this turn of conversation intense and awkward. I couldn’t imagine such an admission from Orma or Eskar. “Um. Do you know where I can find Eskar?”

He stuffed his mouth with eggplant and rice and didn’t look at me. “Eskar’s gone. Two weeks now, not a word to anyone.”

That was a surprise. Comonot’s entire Porphyrian gambit was her idea; surely she wouldn’t have left, not with Comonot due to arrive in less than two weeks. If she wasn’t here, where would she have gone? “Was there another dragon with her?” I pressed.

Lalo shrugged irritably. “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t put off by his brusqueness; that’s what I was used to from dragons. He was clearly done talking to me. I rose to go, scraping the chair back. “Thank you for your time.” He nodded, brushing crumbs off his table for the birds.

I walked back toward Naia’s. The more I thought about it—Orma’s cryptic riddle, his caginess in the letter—the more convinced I was that he’d made a mind-pearl, and that he’d wanted me to know. Had it been a precaution, or had he feared that the Censors were close on his trail?

Might he have left town with Eskar—or more accurately, might Eskar have left town with him? I could believe that she’d leave Porphyry, even with the Ardmagar’s arrival imminent, to protect Orma.

I wished Orma’s ring had been a thnik after all; I could have contacted him and put my mind at ease. Instead, I fretted all the way to the lower city, the afternoon sun beating on the crown of my head.



I had hopes, at the end of this day of dead ends, that at least Abdo’s struggle might have come to its conclusion. Alas, the moment I stepped into Naia’s building, I could tell something had gone terribly wrong. A few of Abdo’s cousins still sat on the stairs, no longer laughing. Only the older women remained in Naia’s apartment, lighting candles in a circle on the floor. I paused in the doorway, wondering whether I had come back too early, but Naia jumped up as soon as she spotted me. Without a word, she took my elbow, led me to Abdo’s alcove, and drew back the curtain. Abdo lay on his mat, twitching fitfully, his eyes open but unseeing. An old woman dabbed his forehead with a wet sea sponge.

“We took him to Paulos Pende,” Naia whispered. “Have no doubt. You were right. The old priest put aside his ire—how could he not, seeing Abdo like this?”

“Abdo was like this?” I asked, horrified.

“Worse. He fought us; he bit Uncle Fasias. He would have been screaming, if he could scream.” She paused, and I saw that she was holding back tears. Her nostrils flattened as she inhaled; her lips trembled. “Pende could do nothing for him, not when Jannoula has got him and he’s fighting her so hard. We need to wait until he prevails and she is dormant, or until he loses the fight and she is at rest.”

I knelt by Abdo’s aged auntie, held out my hand, and said, “May I take a turn?” She wordlessly handed me the sponge, but she didn’t leave. We sat together and shared our sorrow.





There followed a fortnight of frustration.

I took Ingar’s things to Camba’s the very next day, but the doorman said Camba was attending a performance of Necans’s Bitter Nothing with her Tragedy Fanciers’ Club. I said I’d come back another day.