“But several nobles and dignitaries argued vociferously against it. ‘We should be exempt! We are people of quality!’ In the end, only courtiers of less than two years’ tenure and commoners must get tested—and you see the result, my Millie? Vigilantism, and that bastard Apsig gets off without a scratch.”
Glisselda ranted on; I couldn’t focus on it. The room swayed like the deck of a ship. I was thoroughly inebriated now; I suffered the illusion that my head might fall off, for it seemed too heavy to support. Someone spoke, but it took some minutes for the words to penetrate my consciousness: “We ought to at least change her out of that bloody gown before Dame Okra comes back.”
“No, no,” I said, or intended to. Intention and action were curiously blurred, and judgment seemed to have retired for the night entirely. Millie had a tall privacy screen, painted with weeping willows and water lilies, and I let myself be persuaded behind it. “All right, but just the top gown needs replacing,” I said, my words floating over the screen like vapid, ineffective bubbles.
“You bled fearfully,” called Millie. “Surely it soaked straight through?”
“No one can see what’s beneath …,” I began, fuzzily.
Glisselda popped her head around the edge of the lacquered screen; I gasped and nearly pitched over, even though I was still covered. “I shall know,” she chirped. “Millie! Top and bottom layers!”
Millie produced a chemise of the softest, whitest linen I had ever touched. I wanted to wear it, which addled my judgment still further. I began to undress. Across the room, the girls bickered over colors for the gown; apparently accounting for my complexion and my hair required complicated algebra. I giggled, and began explaining how to solve a quadratic complexion equation, even though I couldn’t quite remember.
I had removed all my clothing—and my good sense along with it—when Glisselda popped her head around the end of the screen behind me, saying, “Hold this scarlet up to your chin and let’s see—oh!”
Her cry snapped the world back into hard focus for a moment. I whirled to face her, holding Millie’s chemise up in front of me like a shield, but she’d gone. The room reeled. She’d seen the band of silver scales across my back. I clapped a hand to my mouth to stop myself screaming.
They whispered together urgently, Glisselda’s voice squeaky with panic, Millie’s calm and reasonable. I yanked Millie’s chemise over my head, almost tearing a shoulder seam in my rush because I couldn’t work out where all my limbs were or how to move them. I curled up on the floor, balling up my own gown, pressing it to my mouth because I was breathing too hard. I waited in agony for either of them to say something.
“Phina?” said Princess Glisselda at long last, rapping upon the screen as if it were a door. “Was that a … a Saint’s burthen?”
My foggy brain couldn’t parse her words. What was a Saint’s burthen? My reflex was to answer no, but mercifully I managed to hold that in check. She was offering me a way out, if only I could make sense of it.
I had managed to stay silent. She couldn’t hear the tears coursing down my cheeks. I took a deep breath and said shakily, “Is what a Saint’s burthen?”
“That silver girdle you wear.”
I thanked all the Saints in Heaven, and their dogs. She had not believed her own eyes. How crazy was that, to think you’d seen dragon scales sprouting out of human flesh? It must have been something, anything else. I coughed, to clear the tears out of my voice, and said as casually as I could, “Oh, that. Yes. Saint’s burthen.”
“For which Saint?”
Which Saint … which Saint … I could not think of a single Saint. Luckily, Millie piped up, “My aunt wore an iron anklet for St. Vitt. It worked: she never doubted again.”
I closed my eyes; it was easier to produce coherent thoughts without vision distracting me. I injected some truth: “At my blessing day, my patron was St. Yirtrudis.”
“The heretic?” They both gasped. No one ever seemed to know what Yirtrudis’s heresy had consisted of, but it didn’t seem to matter. The very idea of heresy was dreadful enough.
“The priest told us Heaven intended St. Capiti,” I continued, “but from that day to this, I’ve had to wear a silver girdle to, uh, deflect heresy.”
This impressed and apparently satisfied them. They handed me a gown; scarlet had won the argument. They did my hair and exclaimed at how lovely I was when I bothered to try. “Keep the gown,” insisted Millie. “Wear it on Treaty Eve.”
“You are all generosity, my Millie!” said Glisselda, pinching Millie’s ear proudly, as if she’d invented her lady-in-waiting herself.
A rap at the door was Dame Okra, who stood on tiptoe to peer past Millie’s shoulder. “She’s all patched up? I’ve found just the person to whisk her away to safety—after which I require a word with you, Infanta.”
Millie and the princess helped me to my feet. “I’m so sorry,” Glisselda whispered warmly in my ear. I looked down at her. Everything seemed shinier viewed through three brandy glasses, but the glittering at the corners of her eyes was real enough.
Dame Okra ushered me out the door, toward my waiting father.
The chill wind in the open sledge did little to sober me up. My father drove, seated close, sharing the lap rug and foot box. My head bobbed unsteadily; he let me rest it on his shoulder. If I were to weep, surely the tears would freeze upon my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I tried to keep to myself; I didn’t mean it to go wrong,” I muttered into his dark wool cloak. He said nothing, which I found inexplicably encouraging. I gestured grandly at the dark city, a suitable backdrop to my drunken sense of epic tragic destiny. “But they’re sending Orma away, which is my fault, and I played my flute so beautifully that I fell in love with everyone and now I want everything. And I can’t have it. And I’m ashamed to be running away.”
“You’re not running away,” said Papa, taking the reins in one gloved hand and hesitantly patting my knee with the other. “At least, you need not decide until morning.”
“You’re not going to lock me up for good?” I said, on the verge of blubbering. Some sober part of my brain seemed to observe everything I did, clucking disdainfully, informing me that I ought to be embarrassed, yet making no move to stop me.
Papa ignored that comment, which was probably wise. Snow spangled his gray lawyer’s cap; little droplets stuck to his brows and lashes. He spoke in measured tones. “Did you fall in love with anyone specific, or simply with the things you cannot have?”
“Both,” I said, “and Lucian Kiggs.”
“Ah.” For some time the only sounds were of harness bells, horses snorting in the cold, and packed snow creaking under the sledge runners. My head waxed heavy.
I jerked awake. My father was speaking: “… that she never trusted me. That cut more deeply than anything else. She believed I would stop loving her if I knew the truth. All the gambles she took, and she never took the one that mattered most. One in a thousand is better odds than zero, but zero is what she settled for. Because how could I love her if I couldn’t see her? Whom did I love, exactly?”
I nodded, and jerked awake again. The air was alive, bright with snowflakes.
He said: “… time to mull it over, and I am no longer afraid. I am sickened that you inherited her collapsing house of deceit, and that instead of tearing it down, I shored it up with more deceit. What price must be paid is mine to pay. If you are afraid on your own behalf, fair enough, but do not fear for me—”
Then he was shaking my shoulder lightly. “Seraphina. We’re home.”
I threw my arms around him. He lifted me down and led me through the lighted doorway.
The next morning, I lay a long time, staring at the ceiling of my old room, wondering whether I’d imagined most of what he’d said. That didn’t sound like a conversation I could have had with my father, even if we’d both been drunk as lords.
The sun was obnoxiously bright and my mouth tasted like death, but I didn’t feel bad otherwis
e. I peeked at my garden, which I’d neglected last night, but everyone was peaceful; even Fruit Bat was up a tree, not demanding my attention. I rose and dressed in an old gown I found in my wardrobe; the scarlet I’d arrived in was too fine for everyday. I descended to the kitchen. Laughter and the smell of morning bread drifted toward me up the corridor. I paused, my hand upon the kitchen door, discerning their voices one by one, dreading to step into that warm room and freeze it up.
I took a deep breath and opened the door. For the merest moment, before my presence was noticed, I drank in the cozy domestic scene: the roaring hearth, the three fine bluestone platters hung above the mantelpiece, little window altars to St. Loola and St. Yane and a new one to St. Abaster, hanging herbs and strings of onions. My stepmother, up to her elbows in the kneading trough, looked up at the sound of the door and paled. At the heavy kitchen table, Tessie and Jeanne, the twins, had been peeling apples; they froze, silent and staring, Tessie with a length of peel dangling from her mouth like a green tongue. My little half brothers, Paul and Ned, looked to their mother uncertainly.
I was a stranger in this family. I always had been.
Anne-Marie wiped her hands on her apron and tried to smile. “Seraphina. Welcome. If you’re looking for your father, he’s already left for the palace.” Her brow crumpled in confusion. “You came from there? You’d have passed him on the way.”
I could not remember anyone meeting us at the door last night, now that I thought of it. Had my father sneaked me into the house and upstairs without telling her? That sounded more like Papa than a conversation about love, lies, and fear.
I tried to smile. It was an unspoken covenant with my stepmother: we both tried. “I—in fact, I’m home to retrieve something. From my, uh, room. That I forgot to take with me, and need.”
Anne-Marie nodded eagerly. Yes, yes, good. The awkward stepdaughter was leaving soon. “Please, go on up. This is still your house.”
I drifted back upstairs, lightly dazed, wishing I had told her the truth, because what was I going to do for breakfast now? Astonishingly, my coin purse had made the whole journey and wasn’t languishing on the floor of Millie’s room. I’d buy myself a bun somewhere, or … my heart leaped. I could see Orma! He had hoped I’d come see him today. That was a plan, at least. I would surprise Orma before he disappeared for good.
I pushed that latter thought aside.
I packed the scarlet gown carefully into a satchel and made up the bed. I could never fluff the tick like Anne-Marie; she was going to figure out that I’d slept here. Ah, well, let her. It was Papa’s to explain.
Anne-Marie required no farewells. She knew what I was, and it seemed to put her at ease when I behaved like a thoughtless saar. I opened the front door ready to head into the snowy city when there came a pattering of slippered feet behind me. I turned to see my half sisters rushing up. “Did you find what you came for?” asked Jeanne, her pale brow wrinkled in concern. “Because Papa said to give you this.”
Tessie brandished a long, slender box in one hand, a folded letter in the other.
“Thanks.” I put both in my satchel, suspecting I should view them in privacy.
They bit their lips in exactly the same way, even though they weren’t identical. Jeanne’s hair was the color of clover honey; Tessie had Papa’s dark locks, like me. I said, “You turn eleven in a few months, do you not? Would you—would you like to come see the palace for your birthday? If it’s all right with your mother, I mean.”
They nodded, shy of me.
“All right then. I’ll arrange it. You could meet the princesses.” They didn’t answer, and I could think of nothing more to say. I’d tried. I waved a feeble farewell and fled through the snowy streets to my uncle’s.
Orma’s apartment was a single room above a mapmaker’s, nearer to my father’s house than St. Ida’s, so I checked there first. Basind answered the door but had no idea where my uncle had gone. “If I knew, I’d be there with him,” he explained, his voice like sand in my stockings. He gazed into space, tugging a hangnail with his teeth, while I left a message. I had no confidence it would be delivered.
Anxiety hastened my feet toward St. Ida’s.
The streets were jammed full of people out for the Golden Plays. I considered walking down by the river, which was less crowded, but I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. The crush in the streets stopped the wind, at least. There were large charcoal braziers set every block or so to keep playgoers from freezing; I took advantage of these when I could wedge myself close enough.
I had not intended to watch the plays, but it was hard not to pause at the sight of a giant, fire-belching head of St. Vitt outside the Guild of Glassblowers’ warehouse. A blazing tongue ten yards long roared forth; everyone shrieked. St. Vitt caught his own eyebrows on fire—unintentionally, but Heavens, was he fierce with his brow aflame!
“St. Vitt, snort and spit!” chanted the crowd.
St. Vitt had not been possessed of such draconian talents in life, of course. It was a metaphor for his fiery temper or for his judgment upon unbelievers. Or, as likely as not, somebody at the Guild of Glassblowers had awakened in the middle of the night with the most fantastic idea ever, never mind that it was theologically questionable.
The Golden Plays stretched the hagiographies all round because the fact was, no one really knew. The Lives of the Saints contained many contradictions; the psalter’s poems made things no clearer, and then there was the statuary. St. Polypous in the Lives had three legs, for example, but country shrines showed as many as twenty. At our cathedral, St. Gobnait had a hive of blessed bees; at South Forkey, she was famously depicted as a bee, big as a cow, with a stinger as long as your forearm. My substitute patroness, St. Capiti, usually carried her severed head on a plate, but in some tales her head had tiny legs of its own and skittered around independently, scolding people.
Delving deeper into the truth, of course, my psalter had originally coughed up St. Yirtrudis. I had never seen her without her face blacked out or her head smashed to plaster dust, so surely she had been the most terrible Saint of all.
I kept moving, past St. Loola’s apple and St. Kathanda’s colossal merganser, past St. Ogdo slaying dragons and St. Yane getting up to his usual shenanigans, which often involved impregnating entire villages. I passed vendors of chestnuts, pasties, and pie, which made my stomach rumble. I heard music ahead: syrinx, oud, and drum, a peculiarly Porphyrian combination. Above the heads of the crowd, I made out the upper stories of a pyramid of acrobats, Porphyrians, by the look of them, and …
No, not acrobats. Pygegyria dancers. The one at the top looked like Fruit Bat.
I meant Abdo. Sweet St. Siucre. It was Abdo, in loose trousers of green sateen, his bare arms snaking sinuously against the winter sky.
He’d been here all along, trying to find me, and I’d been putting him off.
I was still staring at the dancers, openmouthed, when someone grabbed my arm. I startled and cried out.
“Hush. Walk,” muttered Orma’s voice in my ear. “I haven’t much time. I gave Basind the slip; I’m not confident I can do it again. I suspect the embassy is paying him to watch me.”
He still held my arm; I covered his hand with my own. The crowd flowed around us like a river around an island. “I learned something new about Imlann from one of my maternal memories,” I told him. “Can we find a quieter place to talk?”
He dropped my arm and ducked up an alley; I followed him through a brick-walled maze of barrels and stacked firewood and up the steps of a little shrine to St. Clare. I balked when I saw her—thinking of Kiggs, feeling her dyspeptic glare as criticism—but I kissed my knuckle respectfully and focused on my uncle.
His false beard had gone missing or he hadn’t bothered with it. He had deep creases beside his mouth, which made him look unexpectedly old. “Quickly,” he said. “If I hadn’t spotted you, I’d have disappeared by now.”
I took a shaky breath; I’d come so close to missing him. “Your siste
r once overheard Imlann consorting with a cabal of treasonous generals, about a dozen in all. One of them, General Akara, was instrumental in getting the Goreddi knights banished.”
“Akara is a familiar name,” said Orma. “He was caught, but the Ardmagar had his brain pruned too close to the stem; he lost most of his ability to function.”
“Does the Queen know?” I asked, shocked. “The knights were banished under false pretenses, but nothing has been done to correct this!”
My uncle shrugged. “I doubt Comonot disapproved of that consequence.”
Alas, I believed that; Comonot’s rules were applied inconsistently. I said, “If the cabal could infiltrate the knights, they really could be anywhere.”
Orma stared at St. Clare, pondering. “They couldn’t be quite anywhere, not easily. There would be a danger of law-abiding dragons sniffing them out at court. They could count on there being no other dragons present among the knights.”
It hit me then, what Imlann might have been doing. “What if your father has been observing the knights? He might have burned their barn and shown himself as a final assessment of their capabilities.”
“A final assessment?” Orma sat down impiously on the altar, deep in thought. “Meaning Akara didn’t just have the knights banished for vengeance? Meaning this cabal has been deliberately working toward the extinction of the dracomachia?”
There was one clear implication of this; we both knew what it was. My eyes asked the question, but Orma was already shaking his head in denial.
“The peace is not a ruse,” he said. “It is not some ploy to lull Goredd into false complacency until such time as dragonkind regains a clear superiority of—”
“Of course not,” I said quickly. “At least, Comonot did not intend it that way. I believe that, but is it possible that his generals only pretended to agree to it, all the while making St. Polypous’s sign behind their backs—so to speak?”