Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(90)

Kiggs steered me through the chattering guests toward a stout older woman with a face like a bulldog’s. Her head was shaved, which meant she was a widow—there were several at Old-Timers’ Hour—but she still wore the golden Agogoi circlet. It creased her bare scalp. She raised her eyebrows expectantly at Kiggs as if she knew him already.

“Madam Speaker,” he said, bowing respectfully. “May I present Seraphina Dombegh, Queen Glisselda’s emissary to your ityasaari. Seraphina, this is Her Honor, Phyllida Malou Melaye.”

I wasn’t sure how one greeted the Speaker of the Assembly; I tried Goreddi-style full courtesy, which surely looked a little strange in my harborside clothing. In fact, my clothing looked a little strange in this setting, I now realized. I wasn’t underdressed, exactly; rather, I was from the entirely wrong class.

Speaker Melaye flared her nostrils skeptically. “I’ve heard of you,” she said in Goreddi. “You would have done better to speak to me first if you were hoping to borrow our ityasaari. I could have arranged something; even priests have their price. Instead, you’ve outraged the temple of Chakhon. You’ll never make any progress with them now.”

I knew Pende was displeased, but outraged? And the whole temple, at that? I curtsied to cover my mortification and managed to say, “I live and learn, Your Honor.”

She made a dismissive noise and waved me off. Her diaphanous full sleeves billowed as she moved, giving her the appearance of a cranky butterfly.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” said Kiggs softly as we turned away. “Selda said that ityasaari priest was set against you. Melaye couldn’t have bought him off.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said, sighing. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Assembly might have a say in whether the ityasaari could or should come south; I wished I’d had a chance to try that angle.

“Phina,” said Kiggs, and I met his eye. His smile radiated warmth and sympathy. “I have strict orders not to let you brood about this. Selda will have my hide.”



The evening rapidly became a blur of novelty meats—the most tentacled being octopus stuffed with squid stuffed with cuttlefish—and introductions I couldn’t keep straight. A handful of people had traveled the Southlands (including an octogenarian who insisted that we Goreddis were poisoning ourselves by eating so much pine; Kiggs was confounded by this, but I thought of Josquin and Moy and laughed to myself). I met the heads of all the founding families, of whom I only remembered the one I’d already met, Amalia Perdixis Lita. Two of her sons, smiling, bearded fellows in their forties, accompanied her. Camba was evidently the baby of the family.

We kept glimpsing Comonot and losing him again. Halfway through the evening, he planted himself beside the fountain and began telling stories in a wine-ripe voice. Kiggs darted over to Comonot’s side at once, and I followed. Drink rendered the Ardmagar talkative, and there were matters of state and strategy that the prince wouldn’t wish him to reveal to the gathering crowd.

“I’ve seen war and carnage,” the old saar was saying. “I’ve killed humans, burned villages, eaten their babies, and stepped on their dogs. I’ve killed other dragons—not often, but I’ve severed more than one jugular and been scalded by the steaming blood. Battling the Old Ard should have been nothing new.”

His jowly face sweated in the evening heat. He took a swallow of wine. “Still, I had never seen anything like this. The sky-rending screams, the choking sulfurous smoke stinging your eyes even through nictitating eyelids. Below you spreads a valley of charred and oozing meat—meat you can’t even eat, all nestmates and co-fliers. You recognize that flayed wing or this mangled head, the smells of a hundred individuals beneath the singular reek of death.

“How many did I kill? When they first charged us, fangs bared and gullets blazing, I hoped I might not have to kill at all. A bite on the back of the neck to establish dominance, and they’d back down. That was our way, once. But the moment comes when claws are tearing at your eyes and your wing is on fire and you have no other option.

“We won that battle, if you can call it winning. We were the only side with dragons still flying. They fought to the death, all of them.” The Ardmagar paused, his eyes glazed, remembering.

“It was unconscionable,” he said at last. “Eskar was right. I can’t countenance the deaths of so many. We lay single eggs and incubate them for three years. We are a slow-maturing species. When I think of all the time and resources and education that lay wrecked on the floor of that valley, just to stop me from returning north …” He shook his head, his mouth bowed bleakly. “What a waste.”

“Why did they fight to the death?” asked a tall man at the edge of the listening crowd. I recognized him as one of Camba’s brothers; shadows flickered over his face in the lamplight. “The Old Ard are dragons, too. They value logic as much as you do. Where’s the logic in dying?” Around him the crowd murmured in agreement.

Comonot considered. “Logic can lead to many ends, citizen. No one likes to admit that—not even your philosophers. Dragons revere its incorruptible purity, but logic will coldly lead you over a cliff. It all depends on where you begin, on first principles.

“The Old Ard have found a new ideology. Its endpoint is potentially the death of thousands, up to and including themselves. I can assure you that they have arrived there through ruthless, unflinching logic, from some very particular beginning. We could, in principle, reason backward to find out what it is. I’m not sure I care to.”