Shadow Scale (31 page)

Abdo plopped himself on the couch and extended his bandaged hand.
Help me take this off, Phina madamina
, he urged.
And tell her what happened. I’m having trouble
.

I sat beside him, unwrapping the bandages, and told Aunt Naia—with Ingar’s translation assistance—of our travels through the Southlands, how helpful Abdo had been, and of the attack that had led to this injury.

His hand lay inertly in my lap. “Show me, fig,” said Aunt Naia, kneeling.

Abdo swallowed hard and wiggled his thumb. He wiggled it again. His other fingers splayed rigidly, as immobile as sticks.

The next morning Abdo pleaded illness and stayed in bed; he slept on a folding mat in an alcove full of ledger books, a curtain pulled across the doorway. Naia, Ingar, and I tiptoed around,
quietly breakfasting on fish and eggplant fritters brought up from a restaurant downstairs. Naia checked in to see if Abdo would eat, then came out of the alcove shaking her head sadly.

“He mourns his hand,” she said, rubbing her forehead with her thumb. “Let’s give him some time.”

I suspected it wasn’t just his hand. He’d also been depressed about Jannoula invading his mind, but he’d had to keep moving or he never would’ve gotten home. Now that he was home, the full weight of it had landed on him.

After breakfast, Naia was adamant that Ingar and I attend the public baths. “I know you Southlanders are afraid of your souls being sucked down the drain,” she said firmly, “but that’s a myth. It is good to be clean.”

Ingar seemed interested, which astonished me, considering that the hunch under his shirt was a pair of vestigial wings. My heart shrank from the prospect of revealing the scales on my arm and midriff to dozens—hundreds?—of strangers. I pleaded shyness fervently enough that I was off the hook for the morning, anyway. “I will take you this afternoon, at Old-Timers’ Hour,” said Naia decisively as she gathered her basket of bath things. She left Abdo a note and prodded Ingar out the door with one finger.

I left when they did, heading the opposite way per Naia’s directions—west through handcart traffic along the cobbled seawall road—in search of the Goreddi embassy and a thnik with which to contact Queen Glisselda. The sky arched overhead, outrageously clear and blue; the sun on the back of my woolen doublet grew hot. Everyone I passed—from the lowliest gull-baiting
harbor urchin to the bearded, perfumed merchant checking his inventory off a list—was dressed sensibly for this weather in light, drapey fabrics. I removed my outer layer, but the linen shirt beneath was already drenched with sweat.

Naia was right that I needed a bath. I needed some lighter clothing as well.

Such was my exaggerated sense of Goreddi importance that I’d expected to find the embassy among the monumental marble-faced buildings around the city’s central square, the Zokalaa. After staring stupidly at the columned temples, the Vasilikon (a domed hall where the Assembly of Agogoi met), and the Grand Emporio (a busy covered market), I was forced to inflict my questionable Porphyrian on passersby. First I tried one of the couriers darting across the square like bees, but he wouldn’t stop for the likes of me. Then I tried a young mother with two trailing servants, one with an enormous shopping basket, the other carrying the baby. She smiled indulgently and directed me up a side street so steep it had steps and so narrow I could touch the whitewashed walls to either side. There was no traffic here except a man driving a donkey laden with copperware. I had to duck into a doorway to let him pass.

At last, upon a plain wooden door in a shadowy alcove, I saw the bronze plaque that read
Embassy
in both Porphyrian and Goreddi. The knocker was shaped like a rabbit, Pau-Henoa, the Goreddi trickster hero.

A Porphyrian doorman opened a tiny peephole at eye level, took my name, and shut the portal again. I waited, shading my
eyes against the strengthening sun. He popped out at last, like the cuckoo of this particular clock, handed me a folded parchment envelope, and disappeared again.

I hesitated, considering whether I should knock again and ask to see the ambassador, but surely if he’d wanted to see me, I’d have been asked inside. Maybe he wasn’t even here, but petitioning for Goreddi interests at the Assembly of Agogoi.

I presumed that was how it worked. They had no royalty here in Porphyry.

I opened the envelope, and a thnik fell into my palm, gleaming dully, another sweetheart knot. I wouldn’t have to share with the ambassador after all; apparently Glisselda had sent word that I was to have my own. I walked downhill, back toward the harbor, looking for a private place where I could talk to my Queen, since I couldn’t just go back to Naia’s. Jannoula might listen in through Abdo.

The western docks cradled travel and pleasure vessels, and on the far west side, a breakwater extended nearly half a mile across the mouth of the harbor. At its end rose a lighthouse, the mate of a second beacon on the other side. I set out for the breakwater.

It was a popular place to walk; one could take in the sea air without the bustle and stink of fishing boats. Couples young and old enjoyed the cool breezes; carts selling eggplant fritters and sardines-on-a-stick were set up at intervals, in case anyone had skipped breakfast. Most of the walkers wore gold circlets on their heads, meaning they were wealthy Agogoi. Servants sometimes followed a few steps behind, holding a sunshade or carrying a baby. Masters and servants alike watched me with a mixture of
amusement and confusion. A foreign fool, pasty, overdressed, and sweating like a pig, made a quaint novelty this sunny morning.

The promenade split and circled the bottom of the lighthouse. The strollers turned around here but did not linger. Could one grow immune to the sight of sea meeting sky? The island of Laika, where the Porphyrians harbored their navy, slumbered to the southwest. Seabirds reeled giddily around it; when the wind was right, I could hear sea lions roaring, although I couldn’t distinguish them from the rocks. I sat upon a block of stone, warmed by the sun and not too guano-covered, and called home for the first time in weeks.

“Castle Orison. Identify yourself, if you please,” said a page boy.

“Seraphina Dom—” I began, but Glisselda was apparently standing right there.

“Phina!” she cried. “You made it to Porphyry. Everyone is well?”

I grinned at her enthusiasm. “Everyone is a lot of people to account for,” I said. “But yes, I’m well. Abdo …”

Was not well. My voice snagged on that.

“We got the message you sent through Lars,” she said. “It was clever of you to make sure Viridius knew what had happened. Lars seems to have been compromised.”

The breeze turned colder; a gull screamed. “What happened?” I said.

“Lars came to tell us your news,” she said. “Just as you’d expect. Big, loyal Lars, and Viridius with him, propped up on his canes. Lars told us you ran into trouble and lost your thnik, but you were on a ship to Porphyry now, and we could get a new think
to you there. The whole time, Viridius was saying, ‘Yes, but, my dear, tell them about—’ But Lars kept talking over him. Finally Viridius got fed up and cried, ‘See here, the most important news is that Lars’s brother, Josef, has usurped—’

“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.