Shadow Scale (37 page)

Morning and evening, I tried to talk to him. He replied only
once:
I’m building a wall, Phina madamina. Like you did. I think I can keep her from
—

Then his struggle pulled him under again.

I went out every day with a tight, cold knot of worry under my ribs. Sometimes a dizziness would overtake me, an effervescent buzz of fear, but I steeled myself against it, putting one foot in front of the other and faithfully barking up all the wrong trees.

I went back to Camba’s. She was washing her hair and couldn’t see me.

I got better at identifying saarantrai in Metasaari; they were emotional for dragons, but their mannerisms were understated. They hadn’t picked up the boisterous range of Porphyrian gestures one saw in the rest of the city; they kissed each other’s cheeks in greeting, but with the utmost seriousness. I asked at saarantrai shops, doctors’ offices, importing houses, and law firms, but everyone told the same story: Eskar had been and gone. No one had so much as glimpsed Orma; his notes at the Bibliagathon remained undisturbed.

After four or five days of writing Camba and receiving no reply, I resigned myself to finding the other ityasaari on my own. I still had a garden in my mind, for all that it was rapidly shrinking (forty-seven paces between the Milestones; forty-two; thirty-nine). I could induce visions of any of them.

Winged Miserere, whom I’d already glimpsed, didn’t require even that much effort. I saw her almost every day, perched on rooftops or statuary, policing the city like some sinister vulture, her very presence a deterrent to crime. I couldn’t get near her
perch, alas, and she did not deign to approach me. It occurred to me that my best chance to meet her might be to commit a crime. Of course, I never seriously entertained the notion; Kiggs and Glisselda would have been mortified.

I located the tall, athletic twins of my visions—called Nag and Nagini in my garden—on the day they were to receive public honors for their victories during the city’s Solstice Games. I rushed to the Zokalaa in time to catch most of the ceremony, watching from the back of the crowd, standing on tiptoe and craning my neck. They were fraternal twins, male and female, but they looked nearly identical with their close-cropped hair, white tunics, and skin the darkest shade on the Porphyrian spectrum. I guessed they were about my age, sixteen or seventeen. They stood atop the steps of the Vasilikon, holding hands, their eyes lowered modestly, while a great-voiced herald read out the Assembly’s proclamation of honor and a priestess of Lakhis crowned them with lush green wreaths.

Beside me, a bearded man—but then, that described half the men of Porphyry—smiled at my interest and leaned in. “They’re the best runners we’ve seen in a generation,” he said in Samsamese, mistaking my ethnicity.

He nattered on about their speed and statistics, and the glory of the goddess. I listened, curious whether he’d tell me they were ityasaari, but he never mentioned it. Was it simply unremarkable, or did he not know?

The twins lived with the other consecrated athletes in a special precinct behind the temple of Lakhis. There was no entry for the likes of me.

In visions, I often saw the one called Gargoyella hurrying up the steps of the Vasilikon. She was an elderly woman with white braids wrapped around her golden Agogoi circlet; she always wore a red stole trimmed in blue, clearly some badge of office. I questioned citizens in the Zokalaa and learned that she was a lawyer, the Assembly’s chief prosecutor, and her real name was Maaga Reges Phloxia.

I screwed up all my courage and stepped in front of her one evening as she was descending the steps. She was much shorter than me, and clearly did not like being stopped, because she smiled at me.

I’d seen that smile in visions, so I wasn’t surprised, but it was still alarming. Her mouth, which she normally kept tightly pursed, spread unnaturally wide, almost to her ears, revealing pointed teeth like a shark’s.

“Out of my way,” she said in clear Goreddi.

“Forgive me, Phloxia,” I said. “My name is Seraphina Dom—”

“I know who you are,” Phloxia said sharply. “Paulos Pende has forbidden me to speak to you. Do you know the full legal implications of such a priestly injunction?”

She was so lawyerly, so reminiscent of my father, that I almost laughed. I could tell I was about to get an earful, so I raised my hands in surrender to her shark-like smile and backed away. “I don’t know Porphyrian law at all,” I said. “I’m going to have to take your word for it, whatever your argument may be.”

Her gaze softened a little. “I think he’s depriving us of a wonderful opportunity. I always suspected we had Southlander cousins. I’ve been looking for a loophole,” she said quietly, her mouth wobbling grotesquely as she spoke. “I haven’t found one yet.”

Then she wrapped her stole around her and hurried away into the Zokalaa crowds.

The last ityasaari, Newt, was a singer. I enjoyed inducing visions of him; I could have listened forever. I knew he often performed in the harbor market, warbling behind a row of canvas booths, or joining in with singing fisherfolk as they unloaded their crab pots. I began stalking him with my flute, parking myself in the market to play. He didn’t approach, but I’d hear him in the distance, singing the shadow of my song. We circled, shy of each other, never meeting, until one morning I spotted him, sitting on the edge of the fountain: a white-haired, freckled old man with an oddly elongated torso and stunted limbs.

He had cataracts in both eyes, but he looked up as if he sensed me and smiled beatifically, his wispy hair fluffing in the breeze like clouds upon the mountaintop. He closed his scaled eyes, raised his chin, and began to sing a low, droning note. The crowd around him quieted to a dull murmur, elbowing each other, as if they knew his singing and treasured it. Above his drone, as light and tremulous as flames dancing on water, keened an ephemeral overtone, a ghostly, whistling harmonic.

This singing technique was called sinus-song in Ziziba. I’d read about it, and speculated upon its mechanics with Orma, but I’d never heard it done. I didn’t know the art was practiced in Porphyry.

After a couple of false starts, I found a way to accompany his ethereal song with my clumsy, earthbound flute. Together we wove a song of sky and sea and the mortals who must live between the two.

A trumpet blared, a brassy knife through the middle of our music, and we cut off abruptly. The crowd parted for a large palanquin draped in white, borne by muscular young men. Behind the gauzy curtains, I could make out three priests of Chakhon, Paulos Pende among them. Worried about the “priestly injunction” Phloxia had mentioned, I turned away reflexively so he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t want to get Newt in trouble for associating with me.

The litter passed and the marketplace resumed its bustle, but my music partner had disappeared into the maze of tables and tents.

Camba wrote back at long last, two weeks to the day after Pende had pulled Jannoula out of Ingar’s mind:

The handwriting, blocky and stiff, was not Camba’s, and for a moment I wondered if Ingar had written the note, pretending to be Camba. Ingar would not have misspelled
ciphered
, though, not with his language skills. It was most peculiar.

Still, I welcomed the distraction and, unexpectedly, looked forward to seeing Ingar again.

The doddering doorman of House Perdixis let me in; I was expected, it seemed, so the note must have been written with Camba’s knowledge. I waited in her dim, faded atrium, where a cracked fountain trickled. An allegorical statue of Commerce gazed sternly into the pool; she was green in all her nooks and crannies. Camba, long-necked and stately, came out to meet me, kissed me solemnly upon both cheeks, and made me remove my shoes. Behind her, a petite white-haired woman, elegantly dressed, lingered in the doorway, watching me with crow-like eyes.

“My mother, Amalia Perdixis Lita,” said Camba, gesturing graciously.

I was rifling through my memory, trying to recollect the proper way a foreigner should greet a woman who outranks her in age, class, and sheer Porphyrian-ness, when Camba’s mother did the surprising. She approached and kissed my cheeks, then grabbed my head and planted a larger kiss on my brow. I’m sure I looked flabbergasted; her face crinkled into a smile.

“Camba tells me you’re the one who spoke to her on the mountainside that terrible day,” said the old woman in Porphyrian. “She thought she’d ruined the reputation of House Perdixis with that poisonous glassware, but you persuaded her to come back and face her brothers. As her mother, I must thank you for that.”

I blinked, thinking my Porphyrian had failed me.

Camba took my arm and led me away, saying, “We’ll be in the garden, Mother.”

She took me up a dim corridor. “Poisonous glassware?” I asked in Goreddi.

Camba averted her eyes. “I imported it from Ziziba, my first solo business deal. It came extremely cheap; I never questioned why. We later learned it was coated with an iridescent glaze, pretty to look at but easily dissolved by liquids. A baby died.”

That was why she’d wanted to kill herself. I’d assumed it was shame at being half dragon. I’d revised my guess after learning she’d misgendered herself, but that had also been wrong.

A single action could derive from many motivations. I should never assume.

We passed through a book-lined study, where two boys about Abdo’s age worked complicated geometry problems. “Mestor, Paulos,” said Camba, pausing to glance at their work. “Finish Eudema’s theorem, and then you’re dismissed.”

“Yes, Aunt Camba,” they droned.

“I leave the import business to my elder brothers these days,” said Camba as we quit the room. She smiled shyly. “Now I tutor my nephews in mathematics and study with Paulos Pende.”

We emerged into a manicured garden, a tidy square of lawn bordered by dark cedars and flanked by two long rectangular pools. A linen sunshade billowed gently in the breeze, and underneath it half a dozen people sat in wrought-iron chairs. It took a moment for my eyes to readjust to the sunlight and recognize Ingar, Phloxia the lawyer, winged Miserere, harbor-singing Newt, and the smiling twins.

“Phloxia found a loophole,” said Camba beside me, her voice quiet and low, “and we can’t be charged with impiety if we didn’t know you were coming.”

“You invited me!” I cried, astonished.

Her eyes twinkled deviously. “Indeed, I did not. My nephews took dictation to practice their Goreddi. It was never meant to be sent. Clearly, Chakhon’s chancy hand was in it, to a degree even Pende couldn’t dispute. By merciful Necessity, goddess of guests, we welcome you.”

Seeing them all like this, gathered together in a garden, I felt a little overcome. This was what I had longed for, so exactly, down to the cool grass and tidily shaped shrubberies. I caught Ingar’s eye across the yard; he smiled and nodded, but held back while the others lined up and kissed my cheeks in turn.

“Mina,” said Miserere, introducing herself.

“So pleased,” I croaked, clasping one of her clawed hands in mine.

Mina helped Newt forward, for he was nearly blind. “I’m called Brasidas,” he said in Porphyrian, extending his short arm. I took his twisted hand and kissed his freckled cheeks; he beamed and added, “Did you bring your flute?”

“She couldn’t know we would be here,” snapped Phloxia in Goreddi.

“But now that I am here, is it legal for you to stay?” I asked, teasing Phloxia while she administered air-kisses near my ears.

“Oh, I’m here on an errand,” said Phloxia, a devilish look in her eyes. She held up a gold filigree brooch. “I’m returning this to Camba. I can’t trust the servants with it, and I certainly can’t be expected to leave until she takes it from me.”

“Maybe Seraphina sings,” said Brasidas hopefully in Porphyrian.

“Shove over and let the twins have their turn,” said the shark-toothed lawyer, pulling Brasidas aside.

The tall, graceful youngsters kissed both my cheeks at once. “Gaios, Gelina,” they said, their voices nearly identical. Our dragon heritage had left so many ityasaari deformed, but these two had been born absurdly beautiful. Even their silver scales had the decency to manifest in tidy patches behind their ears. They dressed in simple tunics without ornament or ostentation, according to the dictates of Necessity, but that only seemed to underscore how naturally radiant they were.

Servants had set up a table to one side and laid it with figs, olives, and honeyed millet cakes. Camba poured from a sweating silver ewer a cold, thick concoction of lemon, honey, and snow. It froze my teeth.

We talked together in a mix of Goreddi and Porphyrian, Ingar or Phloxia translating when I needed it. I asked them for their stories; they told me how Pende had taken them under his wing as youngsters and they had served the temple of Chakhon for a time. Mina still acted as a guardian of sorts, and Brasidas sang there on holy days.