“I want you to take tomorrow off. See the Golden Plays, visit your family, go out drinking, anything. I’ll handle dress rehearsal,” said Viridius, in his suite after choir practice. He’d been dictating a composition; his comment surprised me so that I jammed the quill awkwardly against a rough patch of parchment, creating an enormous inkblot.
“Have I done something wrong, sir?” I asked, dabbing at the mess with a rag.
He leaned back on his velvet cushion and gazed out the window at the overcast sky and the snowy courtyard. “Quite the contrary. You improve upon everything you touch. I think you’ve earned a day of rest.”
“I just had a day of rest. Two, if being beset by dragons counts as rest.”
He chewed his lower lip. “The council passed a resolution last night—”
“The species-check initiative? Guntard told me.”
He gazed at me keenly. “I thought you might prefer not to be here.”
My hands went clammy; I wiped them on my skirts. “Sir, if you are referring to a rumor circulated about me, by persons unknown, I can assure you—”
He put his gout-swollen, clawlike hand on my forearm and raised his rusty brows. “I’ll put in a good word for you,” he said. “I know I’m not the cuddliest old brick, not always easy to work with, but you’ve done well. If I don’t say so often, it doesn’t mean I don’t notice. You’re the most talented thing we’ve had round these parts since Tertius was taken from us, may he dine at Heaven’s table.”
“Put in a good word for me why?”
His thick lips quivered. “Seraphina, I knew your mother.”
I gasped. “You are mistaken, sir.” The room seemed not to contain enough air.
“I heard her perform at Château Rodolphi in Samsam, some twenty years ago, when I was traveling with Tertius—rest he on Heaven’s hearthstone. She was utterly captivating. When Tertius told me she was a saar, I didn’t believe him at first.”
Viridius gestured toward the ewer; I poured him a cup of water, but when I brought it to him, he said, “No, no, for you. You’ve gone purple around the gills. Calm yourself, child. I’ve known all along, haven’t I? And said nothing?”
I nodded shakily. The cup clattered against my teeth.
He idly tapped his cane on the floor until he thought I was ready to listen again. “I asked Linn to teach at St. Ida’s, where I was headmaster at the time. She said she couldn’t; she was a student herself, just finishing up her research. I sponsored her petition for bell exemption, that she might pursue her research here without terrifying the librarians—or her students, because I hoped she’d teach. It seemed ideal.”
I found myself desperate to slap him, as if he were the author of all my troubles. “It wasn’t ideal.”
“In hindsight, perhaps that’s not surprising. She could really pass, your mother, and she was something extraordinary. She wasn’t bothered with daintiness or coyness or other flavors of silliness; she was strong and practical, and she took no nonsense from anyone. If I’d any interest in women, even I could have seen my way to loving her. It was academic, of course, like the idea that one might shift the entire world with a long-enough lever. One could, but one can’t. Close your mouth, dear.”
My heart palpated painfully. “You knew she was a saar and my father was human, and you never told anyone?”
He heaved himself to his feet and limped over to the window. “I’m a Daanite. I don’t go around criticizing other people’s love affairs.”
“As her sponsor, weren’t you supposed to report her to the embassy before it went too far?” I said, my voice full of tears. “Couldn’t you have warned my father, at the very least?”
“It seems so obvious, in retrospect,” he said quietly, examining a spot on the front of his loose linen shirt. “At the time, I was merely happy for her.”
I took a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me now? You haven’t decided to—”
“To give up my peerless assistant? Do I look mad to you, maidy? Why do you think I’m warning you about the bleed? We’ll spirit you away somewhere, or we’ll find one trustworthy person high up who can keep a secret. The prince—”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “There’s no need. My blood is as red as yours.”
He sighed. “So I’ve gone and revealed how much I admire your work for nothing. Now you’ll feel free to laze around self-importantly, I suppose!”
“Viridius, no,” I said, stepping toward him and impulsively kissing his balding head. “I’m well aware that that’s your job.”
“Damned right,” he grumbled. “And I’ve earned it, too.”
I helped him back to his gout couch, and he finished dictating the major theme and two subthemes of his composition, along with an idea for metamorphosing each into the other, involving an extraordinary transposition. I jotted everything down mechanically at first; it took some time for me to settle down after Viridius’s revelation about my mother, but the music calmed and then awed me. I was gawping inside, like a country girl seeing the cathedral for the first time. Here were flying buttresses and rose windows of music; here columns and vaulting, more prosaic structural elements; and all of it in service to a unified purpose, to clarifying and perfecting the majestic space inside, a soaring expanse as awe-inspiring as the architecture that bounded it.
“I suspect you of not taking me seriously,” grumped Viridius as I cleaned my pens and made ready to depart.
“Sir?” I said, stricken. I had spent the last hour in awe of his artistry. That qualified as taking someone seriously, to my mind.
“You are new enough to court that perhaps you don’t understand the damage rumors can do. Get gone, maidy. There is no shame in a strategic retreat while you wait for Scandal, that damned basilisk, to turn its withering gaze elsewhere—especially if you’re someone who, in fact, has something to hide.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said, giving him half courtesy.
“No, you won’t,” he muttered as I turned to go. “You’re too like your mother.”
Daylight failed impossibly early, assisted by a glowering cloud cover; more snow was coming. After a full day of errands and tasks, I had only the princess’s harpsichord lesson left. She’d had a hectic day herself, overrun with council-related duties; five messengers found me over the course of the day, each requesting a further delay of her lesson until it had been pushed back to almost suppertime. As I approached the south solar one last messenger intercepted me; I must’ve rolled my eyes, because the lad stuck out his tongue before scurrying up the hall.
The note had clearly been dictated. It read: The princess requests that you meet her downstairs in the second laundry. It is urgent. Come immediately.
I blinked at the parchment in confusion. Why would Glisselda want to meet in such an obscure place? Perhaps she was afraid of being overheard.
I ducked down a servants’ stairway to the narrow, utilitarian passages below. I passed under the great hall and the chambers of state, past storerooms, servants’ quarters, and the barred, gloomy entrance of the donjon. I passed a sweltering laundry, but it was the wrong one—or so I deduced by the distinct absence of Princess Glisselda. I questioned a laundress, who pointed me further down the corridor into darkness.
I reached the furnace belonging to the hypocaust for the Queen’s bathroom. Three grimy men fed coal into its open mouth, which reminded me uncomfortably of Imlann’s.
The men leered at me, too, leaning on their shovels and grinning toothlessly.
I paused, the stink of coal heavy in my nostrils. Had I understood the laundress properly? Surely no one would want to wear clothing washed in such close proximity to coal fumes?
I considered asking the hypocaust stokers for directions, but there was something ominous in their aspect. I watched them shoveling; I could not seem to turn away. The heat blasted against my exposed face, even from this distance. Their silhouettes were dark holes in the frantic firelight. Acrid smoke permeated the entire room, making my eye
s and lungs sting.
It was like the Infernum, the torments that awaited souls who rejected the light of Heaven. Somehow, eternal pain was still considered preferable to having no soul at all. I wasn’t sure I saw why.
I turned my back upon this hellish vision. A dark, horned figure stepped directly into my path.
To my dumbfoundment, it was Lady Corongi; I’d mistaken the two peaks of her old-fashioned butterfly hennin. “Is that you, Maid Dombegh?” she asked, peering as if her eyes were not adjusted. “You seem lost, dear girl.”
I emitted a small laugh of relief and gave courtesy, but did not think I should confess that I was to meet the princess somewhere down here. “I was just on my way to Glisselda’s music lesson.”
“You’ve chosen an eccentric route.” She glanced toward the grimy troglodytes behind me and wrinkled her powdered nose in distaste. “Come, I will show you the way back.” She stood waiting, her left elbow jutting out like a chicken’s wing; I deduced I was supposed to take it.
“So,” she said as we walked back up the narrow corridor together. “It has been some time since we spoke.”
“Er … I suppose it has,” I said, uncertain as to her point.
She smirked under her veil. “I hear you’ve become quite the brave adventuress since then, dallying with knights, sassing dragons, kissing the second heir’s fiancé.”
I went cold. Was that story going around too? Was this what Viridius had meant, that rumors gained momentum as they careered along until they were utterly beyond our power to halt? “Milady,” I said shakily, “someone has been telling you lies.”
Her hand upon my arm had tightened into a claw. “You think you know so much,” she said, her voice incongruously pleasant. “But you are outmaneuvered, my pet. Do you know what St. Ogdo says about arrogance? ‘There is blindness in sight, and folly in cleverness. Be patient: even the brightest fire burns itself out.’ ”
“He was talking about dragons,” I said. “And what have I done to make you think me arrogant? Is it because I criticized your teaching?”
“All shall become clear, to the righteous,” she said lightly, dragging me along. We turned west; we entered a laundry.
The second laundry.
The cauldrons were all upturned and the laundresses gone up to supper, but the fires still roared. Bedsheets hung from the ceiling racks, their hemlines grazing the floor, wafting like gowns at a ghostly ball. Shadows flickered grotesquely against these pale screens, growing and shrinking with the fickle firelight.
One shadow moved with purpose. There was someone else here.
Lady Corongi led me through the labyrinth of drying linens to the far corner of the room, where Princess Dionne awaited us, pacing like a caged lioness. This felt wrong. I stopped short; Lady Corongi hauled me forward. The princess sneered. “I suppose it would be fair to let you explain yourself, Maid Dombegh.”
The room had no other door and only the tiniest window, high up the wall, completely steamed over. I began to sweat in the heat; I couldn’t tell what she wanted explained. My dodging the bleed? My rumored dragonhood? Lady Corongi’s other accusation? All of these? I dared not guess. “Explain what, exactly, Your Highness?”
She drew a dagger from her bodice. “Kindly note: I was fair. Clarissa, hold her.”
Lady Corongi was shockingly strong for one so petite and genteel. She put me in a wrestling hold—“the belt buckle,” it’s called, though it’s like a buckle for the shoulders and neck. Princess Dionne moved as if to grab my left arm; I quickly presented her with my right. She gave a small nod and sniffed, satisfied that I was cooperating. I expected her to jab one of my fingers, but she pushed up my sleeves, wrenched my hand back, and drew her knife swiftly across my pale wrist.
I cried out. My heart was galloping like a horse. I jerked my hand away and a spray of red splotches bloomed across the linens hung in front of us like a field of poppies or some hideous parody of a bridal sheet.
“Well. That’s irritating,” said the princess, disgusted.
“No!” cried Lady Corongi. “It’s a trick! I have it on good authority that she reeks of saar!”
“Your good authority got it wrong,” said Princess Dionne, wrinkling her nose. “I smell nothing, and you don’t, either. Rumor changes with the telling; perhaps she wasn’t the one originally implicated. They all look alike, these common brutes.”
Lady Corongi let go of me; I collapsed to the floor. She lifted the hem of her gown fastidiously, pinkies raised, and kicked me with her pointy shoes. “How did you do it, monster? How do you disguise your blood?”
“She’s not a saarantras,” said a calm female voice from beyond the forest of sheets. Someone began crossing the room toward us, paying no attention to the maze, pushing linens aside and barging straight through. “Stop kicking her, you bony bitch,” said Dame Okra Carmine, letting the bloodied sheet fall in place behind her.
Princess Dionne and Lady Corongi stared, as if Dame Okra’s solid shape made a more convincing ghost than all the billowing sheets around her. “I heard a scream,” said Dame Okra. “I considered calling the Guard, but I decided to see what had happened first. Maybe someone merely saw a rat.” She sneered at Lady Corongi. “Close enough.”
Lady Corongi kicked me one last time, as if to prove that Dame Okra couldn’t stop her. Princess Dionne wiped her dagger on a handkerchief, which she tossed into a nearby hamper, and stepped genteelly around my prone form. She paused to glare down at me. “Do not imagine that being human is all it takes to regain my esteem, strumpet. My daughter may be a fool, but I am not.”
She took Lady Corongi’s arm, and the pair of them departed with the dignified air of noblewomen who have nothing to be ashamed of.
Dame Okra held her tongue until they were gone, then rushed to help me, clucking, “Why, yes, you are an idiot for following them into an empty laundry room. Did you imagine they had a fine pillowcase to show you?”
“I never imagined this!” I cradled my arm, which bled alarmingly.
Dame Okra recovered Princess Dionne’s handkerchief and wrapped my wrist. “You do smell of saar,” she said quietly. “A bit of perfume would cover that right up. That’s how I do it. Can’t let a little thing like parentage stand in our way, can we?”
She helped me to my feet. I told her I needed to get to the south solar; she pushed up her glasses with a fat finger and scowled at me like I was mad. “You need help, on multiple fronts,” she said. “My stomach is pulling two directions at once, which is highly irritating. I’m not sure which way to go first.”
We emerged upstairs in the vicinity of the Blue Salon. Dame Okra raised a hand in warning; I held back while she peered around the corner. I heard voices and footsteps, the sounds of Millie and Princess Glisselda heading away from the south solar, where they’d waited for a music lesson that never happened.
Dame Okra squeezed my elbow and whispered, “Whatever her mother may say, Glisselda’s no fool.”
“I know,” I said, swallowing hard.
“Don’t you be one either.”
Dame Okra pulled me around the corner, into the path of the girls. Princess Glisselda emitted a little scream. “Seraphina! Saints in Heaven, what have you done to yourself?”
“Looks like she has a good excuse for being late,” said Millie. “You owe me—”
“Yes, yes, shut up. Where did you find her, Ambassadress?”
“No time to explain just now,” said Dame Okra. “Take her someplace safe, Infanta. There may be people looking for her. And see to her arm. I have one more thing to attend to, and then I will find you.”
The handkerchief had soaked through; there was a streak of blood all the way down the front of my gown. My sight grew dim, but then there was a young woman at each of my elbows, propping me up, moving me on, chatting away. They swept me upstairs into an apartment I deduced was Millie’s. “… you’re nearly the same size,” Glisselda squealed excitedly. “We’ll finally have you looking pretty as can be!”
<
br /> “First things first, Princess,” said Millie. “Let’s see that arm.”
I needed stitches; they called the Queen’s own surgeon. He administered a glass of plum brandy, then another, until I had choked down three. I appeared immune to its dulling effects, so he finally gave up and stitched me up, tut-tutting at my tears and wishing aloud that I had been drunker. I’d expected the girls to look away, but they did not. They gasped, clutching each other, but watched every needle jab and tug of thread.
“Might one inquire how you did this to yourself, Music Mistress?” asked the surgeon, a phlegmatic old fellow without a hair on his head.
“She fell,” Glisselda offered. “On a sharp … thing.”
“In the basement,” added Millie, which I’m sure bolstered the story’s credibility immensely. The surgeon rolled his eyes but could not be bothered to inquire further.
Once the girls had shooed him out, Glisselda grew grave. “How did it happen?”
The spirits seemed finally to have reached my head; between brandy and blood loss and a dearth of supper, the room began to swim before my eyes. As much as I wanted to lie—because how could I tell Glisselda that her own mother cut me?—I could come up with no plausible alternative story. I would omit Princess Dionne, at least. “You’ve heard the rumor that I am a … a saar?”
Heaven forfend that she had heard the other rumor.
“It was vicious,” said the princess, “and evidently unfounded.”
“I hadn’t been bled yet. Some zealous, uh, vigilantes decided to do it for me.”
Glisselda leaped to her feet, seething. “Isn’t this exactly what we hoped to avoid?”
“It is, Princess,” said Millie, shaking her head and putting the kettle on the hearth.
“Seraphina, I’m appalled it came to this,” said the princess. “My original idea—”
“And Lucian’s,” said Millie, apparently allowed to interrupt the second heir.
Glisselda flashed her an irritated look: “One of his Porphyrian philosophers helped too, if you’re going to be that way about it. The idea was that we should all be jabbed, everyone, from Grandmamma herself to the lowliest scullion, noble with common, human with dragon. It would be fair.