Shadow Scale

by Rachel Hartman

  “Then, apparently, Viridius’s cane slipped and he fell,” said Glisselda gravely. “I didn’t see what had happened, but Lucian misses nothing. Lars kicked it out from under him.”

  Below me, the sea churned. I gripped the edge of my stone perch, suddenly dizzy. Lars never would have done such a thing.

  Not unless Jannoula, present in his mind and listening in, had taken over and moved his foot for him.

  Glisselda’s voice crackled: “Viridius hit his head and was unconscious for two days. Lars was utterly distraught, which I felt confirmed an accident, but Lucian insists it was guilt. The upshot is that the two are no longer together. Lars has moved into the south wing with Dame Okra and the Ninysh ityasaari. He’s still working on our war machines, but he hardly speaks to anyone. Lucian is having him watched.”

  “Viridius recovered, though?” I asked, my throat dry. Cantankerous though he was, I was fond of the old composer.

  “Physically, yes. He’s upset with Lars, as you might imagine. He told us about the coup in Samsam. Lucian’s theory is that Lars is ashamed of his brother and didn’t want us to know, but that doesn’t sound like Lars to me.”

  “No,” I said grimly. “Lars would have told you, and he never would have—” My voice caught. I took a deep breath. “Jannoula is in Samsam; I saw her. I believe she has been helping Josef—maybe even with his ascension—and she’s got hold of Lars.”

  There was a long silence. “That’s rather a lot to take in at once,” said Glisselda at last. “So anything we say in front of Lars might be heard in Samsam?”

  “Lars, Dame Okra, Od Fredricka, Gianni Patto,” I said. “For all I know, she’s finally found her way into Nedouard and Blanche as well. Say nothing sensitive in front of any of them.” I stared up at the sky. “On my end she’s got Ingar and Abdo.”

  “St. Masha’s stone,” breathed the Queen. “We feared that you meant Abdo when you called from Fnark.”

  “I wish I understood what Jannoula’s up to,” I fretted.

  Glisselda said grimly, “We know enough. This dalliance in Samsam, aiding and abetting an unsympathetic Regent, shows hostile intent. There’s no chance that Jannoula has taken over Josef’s mind, is there?”

  “She preys on his piety,” I said. “Abdo assured me she wasn’t inside Josef’s mind. However, she …” I was unsure how to explain. “She can make her mind-fire visible to humans. It’s a trick to make herself look Heaven-touched. Be on your guard against it.”

  Was it possible to resist Jannoula’s glamour? I fervently hoped so.

  “Oh, I have no intention of letting her into Goredd if I can help it,” said the Queen. “Alas, the person who would most enjoy meeting her at the border and arresting her for … oh, who knows what? He’d come up with something clever and entirely legal.”

  I couldn’t help smiling; she knew her cousin well.

  “Unfortunately, he won’t be here,” continued Glisselda.

  “What?” I cried. “Where will he be?”

  “Ah,” she said. “I ought not to divulge too much over a thnik, but I believe I may say that the old general begins to think Eskar’s plan has merit. He’s coming to Porphyry, and dragging Lucian with him.”

  So Comonot had apparently gotten over his reservations about bringing the war south to Goredd. I tried to glean how Glisselda felt about that, but her voice gave me no hint. “I need you to finish in Porphyry, Seraphina,” Glisselda was saying. “The Ardmagar will arrive in about two weeks; Eskar and the knights at Fort Oversea have been told to make ready. All your pieces must be in place, too. You and the ityasaari will travel home with Lucian.”

  “Indeed!” I squeaked. My heart had leaped at the mention of home.

  Or of Prince Lucian.

  Glisselda scolded lightly, “I’m jealous of you two.”

  “Y-you are?” I said cautiously, uncertain what she was implying.

  “By Allsaints, yes. Here I am, Queen, stuck in one place, and you two get to go gallivanting all over in my name. It’s terribly unfair.”

  I relaxed a little. “You’re envious.”

  “That’s what I said!” She sounded snippy now; I was trying her patience. Her innocent intention and my guilty conscience weren’t meshing.

  A voice in the background spoke quietly to Glisselda, and she said, “St. Daan in a pan, I’ve got to go. Keep me apprised of your progress.”

  “Of course,” I said, but she had already switched off her device.

  I walked back up the breakwater, my heart torn two ways. Along with my guilt, of course, came its opposite and cause: the joyful anticipation of seeing Prince Lucian Kiggs so soon.

  I returned by way of the harbor market, where I bought some lighter clothes, some olive oil salve for my scales, and a large embroidered pillow as a gift for Naia.

  Abdo’s auntie loved the pillow, but she still made good on her threat to take me to the baths. I survived it by observing everything with an academic, dragon-like detachment: the nautical mosaics across the domed ceiling; the greenish, mildly musty water; my old-fashioned Goreddi shame at being naked; the elderly watching me closely with amusement; and the fact that I was the palest, scaliest person there.

  It was all very curious. I might write some sort of treatise.

  I had been happy to give Abdo a day to himself while I visited the embassy and the baths, but when he didn’t get up the next day, I began to worry. I had two weeks to find the other ityasaari—and Orma—before Kiggs and Comonot arrived, and surely Abdo wanted Paulos Pende, the ityasaari priest, to free him from Jannoula as soon as possible?

  Speaking in a low voice so Ingar wouldn’t hear, I asked Naia after breakfast, “May I wake Abdo? He had hoped to visit the temple of Chakhon soonest.”

  Naia looked appalled. “I doubt that,” she said. “You must have misunderstood.”

  I thought back to our last conversation on the subject, aboard the ship. In fact, he’d been unenthusiastic. “Why wouldn’t he want to go?”

  She pursed her lips, her eyes darting toward Abdo’s curtain, as if she weren’t sure how much he would want her to tell me. “He quarreled with Paulos Pende and parted on bad terms. I doubt the priest would want to see Abdo, either.”

  Ah. Abdo’s reticence on the subject began to make sense. But if the old priest wouldn’t see Abdo, surely he’d see me. Maybe I could broker enough of a peace that the old man would agree to unhook Jannoula. Besides, Paulos Pende was the logical place to start if I was to find the Porphyrian ityasaari. I’d glimpsed the temple of Chakhon yesterday as I’d passed through the Zokalaa.

  Ingar had sidled up behind me while I talked to Aunt Naia. He was a problem. I didn’t want him spying on my progress and keeping Jannoula apprised, but he would surely follow me around like a dog.

  I decided to take the bald bookworm to Porphyry’s renowned library, the Bibliagathon—where Orma had been researching half-dragons. I could lose Ingar there, and maybe take a quick look for my uncle. We set off before noon, toward the heights of the wealthy west side of town.

  “I’ve heard … so much …,” puffed Ingar. I’d been climbing the hill too fast for him, but he wasn’t one to let a little thing like lack of breath stop him from talking. “My own library is … not inconsiderable.…”

  I paused so he could rest. His hairless head sweated rivulets and was alarmingly red. I looked away, at the city spread below us like a colorful bowl, the harbor a splash of violet soup at the bottom. Ingar leaned against a shady garden wall; vines vomited gaudy pink flowers through a crack above his head.

  “I’ve had it sent to Goredd,” he said when he could finally put together an entire sentence without panting.

  “Had what sent?” I’d lost the thread of his thought.

  “My library,” he said. “Jannoula wants to build Heaven on earth, and what else can a paltry fellow like myself contribute? It wouldn’t be much of a paradise without books, you must agree.”

  “Heaven on earth?” I said. This was new. “What
is that supposed to be?”

  “You know,” he said, his bovine eyes wide. “When we’re all together. We will live together in Goredd, with you, and be safe and happy.”

  I opened my mouth and closed it again. Was that what she was after, or was that what she told Ingar she was after, to manipulate him? For all I knew, it was what she’d told Ingar in an attempt to manipulate me, to show she shared my dream of recreating my garden in the world.

  That dream tasted bitter to me now.

  Besides, Heaven on earth didn’t explain her actions in Samsam. Josef’s regency surely portended the opposite of safety for half-dragons, no matter how smitten he might have been with Jannoula herself. She was up to more than Ingar knew.

  “I have twenty-seven thousand books in my library, give or take,” said Ingar, spontaneously setting off again, as if he heard the Bibliagathon calling his name. I followed in silence. “My mother collected books,” he was saying. “That’s how she met my father, the saarantras. He acquired rare books for her, and there are indeed marvels in my collection. I have the original testaments of St. Vitt, St. Nola, and St. Eustace.”

  “The original—meaning, written in the Saints’ own hands?” I asked.

  He shrugged modestly. “A savvier theologian than I would have to inspect them, but I believe so, yes. They’re from the Age of Saints, certainly. The script of that era incorporates some idiosyncratic features—”

  He broke off because just then the famed edifice came into view: the graceful columns and soaring dome, the porches and courtyards where philosophers had walked and argued. A repository of the knowledge of ages, the Bibliagathon occupied an entire city block, and more. Orma had told me half the books were divided among three additional outbuildings: one for the ancient and frangible, one for extremely obscure texts, and one for new acquisitions and the difficult to categorize.

  Ingar hopped on his toes like a little boy; in that moment, I understood him. Here was his Heaven on earth, surely.

  My plan to leave Ingar in the library had a significant flaw: I was not immune to the siren call of books myself. I wandered, transfixed by the endless shelves and scroll niches, the colonnaded courtyards and burbling fountains, the scholars passionately scribbling treatises at long wooden tables, the gentle slant of sunlight along the open corridors.

  That Orma might be here was all the excuse I needed to stay. If he were seeking out historical references to half-dragons, where would he be? I could read the inscriptions above the doors only with difficulty; Porphyrian script differs from Southlander, so I had to think about each letter. Luckily, the inscriptions came with bas-relief carvings. Some were obscure—how does a bullfrog represent philosophy?—but the carving of musical instruments seemed unambiguous.

  Orma was a musicologist by training. It was a place to start.

  The musicology room was unoccupied except for a bust of the poet-philosopher Necans at the far end. His bronze nose shone, polished by generations of scholars unable to resist the temptation to tweak it. I perused the shelves, noting with a certain pride that we had more music books at St. Ida’s in Lavondaville. My uncle had had nearly as many texts in his office.

  Some books were in Southlander script; some were even familiar from my student days. A fat volume of Thoric’s Polyphonic Transgressions, bound in white calf, reminded me so vividly of Orma’s old copy that I pulled the book down on a sentimental whim, looked at the cover, and nearly dropped it.

  There was a gouge mark across the cover where I’d attacked it with my plectrum the day Jannoula had used my mouth to kiss Orma’s.

  This was Orma’s copy, unquestionably. He’d left Goredd with as many books as he could carry—some of which, I’d learned from the librarian at St. Ida’s, weren’t even his. Had he gotten tired of carrying them? He was so possessive of his books that it was hard to imagine him willingly giving one up.

  The book bulged strangely. There was a lectern—a reading desk—near the bust of Necans. I opened the volume of Thoric there and found a second book, a slender manuscript, tucked inside. Behind that was a sheaf of loose papers, which spilled across the desk, cascading over the edge and settling to the floor like falling leaves. I gathered them up, my excitement growing. I knew Orma’s angular writing; these were his notes. If he’d left them, he must be coming back.

  I tried to reorder the jumbled pages, but they weren’t numbered. I began to read, and the first page, happily, soon became obvious. He’d written THESIS across the top in large letters. I read:

  It is difficult to find confirmed historical cases of dragon-human interbreeding. Dragons barely acknowledge that such a thing is possible; if it has happened, they didn’t record it. Human sources occasionally allude to the possibility, without documenting any instances (exception: Porphyrian sources). What if historical half-dragons did exist but their origins were obscured? I propose to search for accounts of people with unusual abilities or characteristics, look for patterns, and surmise from there.

  A large, well-documented collection of such individuals has been under our noses all along: the Saints of the Southlands.

  The Saints? “That’s a crackpot theory, Uncle,” I murmured.

  Crackpot or not, I read on. The library around me faded and the sun crossed the sky unnoted. Orma had systematically researched Southlander Saints—including Saints I’d never heard of—and listed every inhuman characteristic: St. Prue’s blue skin, St. Polypous’s extra legs, St. Clare’s visions. He’d drawn up a chart in which he rated their quirks as likely, plausible, metaphorical, or outright invention (he considered St. Capiti’s detachable head the latter; he had a point).

  I was fascinated and lightly horrified. This kind of thing could get you burned for heresy in Samsam, or so I’d heard. In Goredd … well, no one would believe him. He was a dragon. He admitted to guessing. His argument was a colossal house of cards, and I awaited the inevitable breeze that would knock it down. Instead, I found this:

  The testament is more complete and revealing than I could have hoped. I see why the old priest would have sent it here once he saw what it contained. He didn’t dare destroy a holy relic, but he couldn’t let anyone else know it existed, let alone read it. There is no better hiding place than this library, I think.

  Did he mean the bound manuscript tucked in with his notes? I opened it roughly; the spine cracked, chiding me. Its antique pages were as brittle as leaf pastry, and I didn’t dare touch them, but I saw that the booklet was written in an alphabet I didn’t know.

  A librarian circled the courtyard, banging a gong. I’d been here for hours; the Bibliagathon was closing in ten minutes. It seemed Orma wasn’t coming today, and that the time I’d spent reading his notes might have been better spent seeking Paulos Pende at the temple. There was a bundle of charcoal pencils on the lectern for scholars; I used one to scrawl Naia’s address and Find me! at the end of Orma’s notes, then wedged the pages and testament back into the larger book. I could check back regularly while still seeking out the ityasaari. I drifted outside, preoccupied by my plans, and descended the marble steps.

  Should I wait for Ingar? Eh. He could find his own way home.

  At the bottom of the stairs, four liveried men set down a litter they were carrying. A jeweled hand parted the curtains, and a statuesque woman emerged, dressed in an exquisite saffron gown, pleated and high-waisted. Her strong shoulders were bared to the breeze; the hair piled high on her head was almost architecturally elaborate, with a gold circlet woven through it.

  The circlet meant she was of the Agogoi. Abdo had said it was like the stripes on a bee: a warning. This one has the power to sting you.

  The woman walked toward me, the wooden soles of her sandals clacking on the stairs. I judged her ten years my senior and, when she reached me, half a head taller. I’m not short. I tried not to stare up at her.

  She said in crisp and resonant Goreddi: “You are Seraphina Dombegh.”

  My first instinct was to curtsy, but I wasn’t even wearing
a skirt; I was dressed like a workingwoman from the harborside, in the tunic and trousers I’d bought yesterday. Porphyrians did not shake hands. I bowed as my last resort. The woman did not smile.

  “I am Zythia Perdixis Camba,” she said solemnly. “You should call me—”

  “Camba,” I said, eager to show that Abdo had taught me correct address. Of course, I’d interrupted her with my good manners.

  “Paulos Pende sent me to find you,” she said.

  “Indeed,” I said, pleased to think my day had not been a waste after all, even if it was spooky that this priest knew I was in the city—knew my name, even.

  Camba glanced toward the library doors. “I am to wait for your companion also.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I began, but then, as if on cue, Ingar appeared at the top of the stairs, a librarian at each of his elbows and a third gently prying books out of his hands.

  Camba eyed Ingar’s stout, hunchbacked form skeptically. “He is ityasaari, too?”

  I nodded. It was so strange to hear someone speak casually of ityasaari, as if we were nothing unusual. I supposed that if she knew Pende well, she’d be accustomed to us.

  But how did Pende know?

  Ingar began descending the stairs with a smile on his moony face. His brows shot up at the sight of Camba. She addressed him in Goreddi: “Greetings, friend. I am to bring you to Paulos Pende.”

  Ingar stared at her bug-eyed, as if he’d forgotten every language he knew. Then he turned and scuttled back up the stairs. I called after him, confused, until I realized that maybe he wouldn’t want to meet with Pende. Abdo had said Pende routinely pulled Jannoula out of people’s minds; I couldn’t see Ingar submitting to that willingly.

  Camba gestured a wordless order, and two of her litter-bearers rushed after Ingar.

  Ingar, at the top of the steps, frantically ripped off his doublet and pulled his linen shirt over his head, revealing his pale, sagging torso. I saw he’d smuggled out a book between his vestigial wings, the rapscallion. The book thudded onto the steps behind him as he stretched his wings wide.