Shadow Scale

by Rachel Hartman

  The other dracomachists stood around the field, watching. Sir Joshua Pender, whom I’d first met as Sir Maurizio’s fellow squire, paced back and forth, lecturing on what they were seeing, the mistakes being made. Prince Lucian Kiggs and Sir Maurizio leaned against the low stone boundary of the field, talking quietly. I approached them.

  “I’m not glad of this war—far from it,” Maurizio was saying, “but still I am deeply moved, watching this. I’ve practiced this art since I was a child, and I took it on faith that the moves had purpose and were worth preserving.” He shook his head, awed. “Until Solann volunteered, I’d never seen our dracomachia used against a real dragon. I feel vaguely bad about finding it so beautiful.”

  I’d reached the wall. Kiggs turned to look at me. “Did you get some rest?”

  “Not enough,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “Did you know the Porphyrian ityasaari are here?”

  His brows shot up. “I never saw them arrive. But does this mean … Jannoula succeeded in bringing all the half-dragons together?”

  I thought “succeeded” was an uncharitable way of putting it, considering that I was the one who’d failed. I squinted against the sunset’s glare. “She dragged them here against their wills, but not quite all of them. She doesn’t have Abdo.”

  Jannoula hadn’t brought Pandowdy in, either, now that I thought about it. Maybe she’d found him as repulsive as I had, or maybe she couldn’t move him. How was a limbless slug to get to Lavondaville under its own power?

  Sir Maurizio was unbuckling a weapon from his waist; he wrapped the straps around the scabbard and handed the whole thing over to me. I drew the unassuming antler hilt, revealing a wickedly sharp dagger.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  “Just in case,” said Maurizio, keeping his gaze affixed to the dracomachists in the distance. “I’m a military man, raised by knights since I was seven years old. I realize this tends to bias me toward a certain kind of solution, but I want you to have the option.”

  “The option to kill her?” I asked, trying to hand the dagger back.

  Sir Maurizio didn’t take it. He pointed up the meadow at a pair of dracomachists near the wall who were hitting each other with their fireproof gauntlets instead of listening to Sir Joshua’s lesson. “See those two?” said Sir Maurizio. “The tall one’s Bran; his brother’s farm was near our cave. The short one, Edgar, is really a lass. There are several female dracomachists here. We let them imagine they’ve fooled us; we can’t afford to turn able-bodied recruits away. Edgar is Sir Cuthberte’s grandniece, or some such. I’ve known her since she was a baby.”

  I watched them horse around. They were no older than me.

  “These are the people who will be dying,” said Maurizio quietly. “Make sure you weigh them on the scale of your considerations, won’t you? And keep your options open. That’s all I ask.”

  There was nothing to do but nod solemnly and promise I would try.

  I didn’t take the dagger with me. I let it fall behind some baggage in the command tent when no one was looking. It had a distinctive enough handle that there would be no doubt whose it was; I hoped he would forgive me.

  Sir Cuthberte gave Kiggs and me a set of matched thniks so we could communicate from different parts of the castle. The sun set early, even so soon after the equinox, but Kiggs insisted upon waiting until the moon’s slender sickle followed suit. I watched it and wondered who would be harvesting in this upcoming season of war.

  When the darkness had deepened to the prince’s satisfaction, we set off for Lavondaville, cutting across flax fields on an ancient peasants’ right-of-way. Torches gleamed along the city walls as work crews continued building Lars’s war machines into the night.

  Lars was under Jannoula’s sway, but his work carried on. An agent of the Old Ard wouldn’t have wanted Goredd so well defended, surely?

  We intended to sneak into the castle through the northwest sally port, where we’d fought my grandfather, the dragon Imlann, at midwinter. I would check in with Glisselda to gauge how much influence this self-styled Saint had over her, then take my place among Jannoula’s ityasaari. Kiggs was coming to aid and support me, but until we knew why Glisselda had refused him entry to the city, he was to stay concealed and spy from the shadows.

  As we walked through dark fields, I spoke to him quietly about Jannoula, trying to prepare him: “She awed Anders in only a few minutes; she’s had access to Glisselda for weeks. Don’t be surprised if your cousin has been persuaded completely.”

  He shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t know Selda like I do. She acts like this wee, delicate girl-child, but she’s tough as a weed. She knew not to trust Jannoula. I won’t believe it until I see it, and maybe not even then.”

  “Jannoula has Josef eating out of her hand,” I said. “She’s persuaded dragons to an extreme ideology. Don’t underestimate her.”

  We’d reached the Mews River bridge; the sound of arguing farmers carried over the water. Kiggs led us upstream to a skiff and poled across without getting us too soaked. The frogs of autumn croaked grumpily and plopped off the bank as we landed.

  “What is this ‘mind-fire,’ exactly, and how was Jannoula able to show Anders hers?” said Kiggs when we were safely out of earshot.

  I took a deep breath and told him what little I knew: how all ityasaari seemed to have mind-fire, but only some could see it; how Jannoula could manipulate it, planting her hooks in ityasaari or revealing her light to humans; how I had taken a bit of each ityasaari into myself—Abdo could see the threads leading into me—but nobody seemed able to see my light at all.

  “I presume my garden walls block my light somehow, but it’s a bit of a paradox,” I concluded. “Because where is my light, exactly? Inside the garden?” I made a circle with my hands, miming the walls. “It can’t be. Abdo said my garden looks like a cellar. Pende didn’t see my light there. My mind-fire, like most of my mind, is on the other side of the garden wall, I think. But if it’s outside the wall, why can’t anyone see it? Is there a second wall somewhere? A wall I didn’t consciously build?”

  We’d arrived at the base of the scrubby hill leading up to the sally port. The Queen’s Guard kept a stable nearby; a lantern hung in the window, its light like a piercing cry. We crept around so no one would detect our presence, then climbed a ways in silence.

  When we reached the shrubbery that concealed the cave entrance, Kiggs finally spoke. “You know, all this talk of walls, and of inside and outside, reminds me of the story of the inside-out house.”

  “Inside the outhouse?” I asked, not trying to be funny, but sincerely having no idea what he was talking about.

  He paused inside the cave, feeling around for the lanterns that would light our way. This was going to be a short trip if he couldn’t find them. “The inside-out house,” he repeated. “It’s a Pau-Henoa tale, a really obscure one, from pagan antiquity.”

  “My papa wasn’t much for stories, unless they were legal precedents,” I said. “Anne-Marie is Ninysh and never cared for Goredd’s trickster rabbit.”

  A soft clicking sound was Kiggs lighting the lantern with flint and steel. A yellow glow illuminated his face from below before going out. He adjusted the wick. “Well,” he said, rapping out some more sparks, “the story goes like this. Once upon a time, a greedy fellow named Dowl wanted to own everything in the world. The law in those days said that if something was in your house, you owned it.”

  “So my father would have liked this story,” I said.

  The lantern flame finally held; Kiggs smiled eerily. “Dowl cleverly decided to build an inside-out house. It was just an ordinary house, but he claimed that the space inside was really outside, and the entire world, including everyone else’s houses, was on the inside. He was a bit of a magician, so when he spoke the words, they bent the way he wanted and became true. The entire universe was ‘inside’ his house and belonged to him.

  “Now, as you can imagine, not everyone was pleased with
this arrangement, but the law was the law, and what were they to do? The only space ‘outside’ of Dowl’s house was no bigger than a one-room shack.”

  “I see where this is going,” I said as Kiggs lit the second lantern from the first. “One day Pau-Henoa, the rabbit trickster, came along.”

  “Of course he did,” said Kiggs, handing me the lantern. We set off walking again, up the cave-like tunnel toward the locked doors of Castle Orison. “The story is much more complicated and hilarious than I can remember, unfortunately, but the upshot is that Pau-Henoa persuaded Dowl that most of what he had ‘inside’ his house was junk. The mountains were broken; the oceans smelled; vermin were everywhere. Dowl began to throw things away, pitching them ‘outside.’ The one-room shack expanded and expanded until everything we see today—the whole universe—was ‘outside’ Dowl’s house.”

  I laughed, picturing the universe bounded by the walls of a house, and Dowl all by himself on the other side of those walls—the “inside.”

  “Inside Dowl’s house is nothing now,” said Kiggs in a half whisper, as if this were a ghost story. “Nothing but a desperate, empty longing.”

  It was a place that wasn’t a place, an inside that surrounded the outside. I said, “What made you think to tell me all this?”

  We’d reached the first of three locked doors; he pulled a key out of his sleeve and waggled it at me. “The paradox of your garden. The garden wall is an inside-out house. The space you think of as ‘inside’ your garden isn’t; it’s outside. Your wider mind, including your mind-fire, is actually inside the house, perfectly contained.”

  When I tried to picture it, my thoughts got tied in knots, but one fact stood out to me: the entire point of the wall had been to contain my mind, to prevent it from reaching out to other ityasaari. Of course my mind-fire had to be inside the wall.

  Kiggs locked the door behind us, his eyes twinkling in the lantern light. “It just struck me as a way of thinking about it. There is no literal garden, one presumes, and no physical wall.” He took my arm. “I cannot quite believe how merry I feel,” he said, still explaining. “It is a joy and an infinite relief to take action at last—any action. I have felt stymied and incapable, Seraphina, but now here we are walking toward a mystery, just like old times.” He squeezed my arm. “I could tell you a dozen stories.”

  Around us the darkness hovered tenderly. We passed through it.

  Kiggs knew the castle inside and out. It was riddled with hidden passages, but they weren’t contiguous. We couldn’t get all the way to Glisselda’s suite without crossing empty rooms or, worse, public corridors. I followed Kiggs, hushing when he signaled, removing my boots and carrying them. We sneaked through the boudoirs of sleeping courtiers, and one room where they weren’t sleeping but were eminently distracted.

  We finally reached a narrow passage that ran the length of the royal family’s quarters. Kiggs touched a panel door wistfully as he passed, and I wondered whether that led to his own rooms. About twenty yards along, he paused at another door and pressed a finger to his lips. I nodded understanding. He beckoned me closer and whispered, “She will be surprised to see you, of course. Try to wake her gently. There will be a bodyguard in the antechamber and two more guards in the hallway.”

  Kiggs released the spring latch mechanism, but the door did not swing inward. He handed me his lantern to hold and tried the latch again. He gave up on mechanical finesse and pushed the door with both hands, then with his back and legs. It wouldn’t budge.

  “There’s something in the way of this door,” he said, no longer whispering. “A trunk, or a bookcase. Something heavy, as if she’s deliberately blocked it.” He gave it one last exasperated shove. “So much for speaking with her tonight, before Jannoula knows you’re here.”

  “Could I go in through a window?” I said. His expression told me this was impossible. “How about the front door?” The impossibility in his expression deepened, which perversely amused me. “You’ve seen me bluff guards before. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “They arrest you and throw you in the donjon.”

  “Which would bring me to Glisselda’s attention,” I said. “Not the entrance I planned, but I’ll work with whatever I get.”

  He sighed, poor, long-suffering prince, but led me through the door we’d passed earlier and into a well-furnished suite. He didn’t confirm that these were his rooms, and there weren’t enough books for me to say with certainty—but then, his workspace was up in the East Tower. He wouldn’t have done much here but sleep.

  At the door to the main corridor, he took the lanterns back and whispered, “The corridor does a dogleg, so they won’t see you emerge from this room. Peek around and choose your moment. You’ve got your thnik?”

  I jabbed a finger at him. This one was a ring.

  “I noticed you left the dagger behind,” he said quietly. “I considered bringing it, but decided you were making a principled choice. I hope we don’t regret that.”

  I swiftly kissed the edge of his beard. That probably didn’t assuage his worry, but it raised my courage. I stepped outside, and he silently closed the door behind me.

  I crept up on Glisselda’s guards, who sat facing each other on stools, engrossed in a card game. They did not see me until I was directly in front of her door. “Hoy, maidy, how’d you get up here?” said the taller guard, craning his neck to peer down the corridor, as if there might be more of me coming.

  “I’m one of the ityasaari,” I said, raising my doublet sleeve enough to show a couple of scales. “St. Jannoula sent me with a message for the Queen.”

  “It couldn’t wait till morning?” said the other guard, older but shorter, with a helmet like an overturned basin. He folded and unfolded his hand of cards. “Her Majesty is very particular about her sleep. Hand it over and we’ll see she gets it in the morning.”

  “I’m to tell her in person,” I said. “It’s important.”

  The men looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “St. Jannoula herself, by the Queen’s order, don’t see her in person after hours,” said the taller guard, stretching his legs forward so they were blocking the door. “Even if we let you by, which we won’t, you’d still have to talk your way past her bodyguard, Alberdt. There’s no doing that.”

  “Why not?” I drew myself up as if I were equal to any Alberdt under the sun.

  “Because he’s deaf,” said the older guard, reordering his cards by suit. “Only responds to finger signs. Dunno about you, but I only know this one.”

  His gesture asked me, unsubtly, to leave. I gave meager courtesy, turned on my heel, and walked up the hallway with what dignity I could muster. Once past the dogleg, I ducked quickly into Kiggs’s suite and bolted the door—and none too soon. I heard them stomp past once, twice, thrice, trying doors, trying to work out where I’d gone.

  “I take it that didn’t work,” whispered Kiggs. “Now what?”

  It occurred to me that we might stay in this suite until morning; I suspect it occurred to Kiggs as well. If so, we each rejected the notion on our own, without any discussion. He led me back to the secret passage.

  “It will be harder to move around undetected during the day,” Kiggs whispered as we left his rooms. “I think we should get down to the council chamber while we can, and wait for the morning council meeting. Would that suit you as an arena for your return?”

  It was as good as anything I could think of. Kiggs led the way, sticking to hidden passages as much as possible, watching for guards in the open hallways.

  We reached the council chamber without incident; it was shaped like the quire of a cathedral, with rows of tiered seats facing each other across a central aisle. At the head of the room was a dais with a throne for the Queen. Beyond it, green and violet banners draped the wall behind a large wooden crest of our national emblem, the prancing Pau-Henoa. Kiggs counted off curtains and behind the third from the left found a notch in the wall, which proved to be a door. He worked the trick l
atch, and we slipped through into a narrow room, furnished only with a long wooden bench.

  “In the old days, when the council consisted of unruly knights and warlords, our queens kept armed men concealed here, just in case,” said Kiggs, setting down his lantern. “Now it’s a forgotten space.”

  We tried the bench, found it uncomfortably narrow, and resituated ourselves on the floor, with our backs to the council chamber wall.

  “Sleep if you can,” said Kiggs. “You’ll need all your wits if you mean to spring out at the council in the morning.”

  He sat so close that his arm was touching mine; I was wide awake. Cautiously, I tilted my head until it rested on his shoulder, expecting him to shrug me away. He didn’t.

  He leaned his head against mine.

  “You haven’t mentioned Orma once since you returned,” Kiggs said softly. “I haven’t wanted to ask, for fear of upsetting you.”

  “He wasn’t at Lab Four.” My voice creaked as I spoke. I inhaled sharply through my nose, trying to hold down my feelings; I didn’t want to cry, not now. “I don’t know the state of his mind. The Censors sent him here, at Jannoula’s request, so I presume she knows where he is. I mean to ask her.”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Kiggs, his voice like sunlight. “How awful not to know.”

  I closed my eyes. “I try not to think about it much.”

  There was a long pause; the sound of his breathing soothed me somewhat. “Do you know what some theologians believe about that story I told you? The inside-out house?” he said at last.

  “I thought it was a pagan tale, predating the Saints,” I said.

  “Yes, but some religious thinkers—the ones I like best—believe the pagan ancients were wise, that they caught glimpses of greater truths. They take Dowl’s house, the emptiness surrounding the fullness of the universe, as a metaphor for the Infernum. Hell is nothingness.”