“I’ve made an old woman a little less lonely,” Jann-Okra was saying. “You overheard her talking to me, surely. How could you not? She has a voice like a mule.”
I glowered. “I heard.”
“Why begrudge her my company if she enjoys it?” She leered nastily, an expression Dame Okra’s face was already quite good at. “I’m tempted to teach you a lesson. I could speak to you in your head again, through Miss Fusspots, and make you unfasten her, like you did Gianni. I could make you eject everyone from your garden, one by one, until you are truly, utterly alone.”
She smiled bitterly. “You’ve never appreciated how lucky you are. Your mind reached for the rest spontaneously. I had to go looking, but my diligence reaps a good harvest at last. I have sought and I have found. Seeing them all in your head helped me. You were my map.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”
She looked mildly surprised. “I want exactly what you want, Seraphina: the half-dragons together at last. We’re on the same quest; I consider you my helpmate.”
“I’m not doing this for you!” I cried.
She wasn’t listening; her eyes had suddenly gone glassy. Her wrinkled cheeks paled, and a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. I leaned forward, holding my breath, hoping that this was the opening salvo in some internal war, that Dame Okra was fighting back. The old woman was so pugnacious that I couldn’t imagine her not battling Jannoula. If anyone could hope to defeat her, surely—
Her eyes refocused and Jannoula’s voice said: “So that’s her famous sense of premonition. Intriguing, and surprisingly painful.” She rubbed Dame Okra’s padded belly and swallowed like one fighting nausea. “The vision pleased me, however. Seraphina, you have helped me whether you meant to or not, and in mere moments you will learn how I’ve helped you.”
There was a knock at the front door.
One of Dame Okra’s maids scurried past the library to answer it; after a hushed and hurried exchange of words, the visitor came clumping down the corridor toward us. Jann-Okra pursed her thick lips into a coy smile. I turned to face the door, bracing myself, not sure whom or what we were expecting.
It was Od Fredricka. Her red hair had tangled into an even wilder mane; mud caked her shoes. She stared with wild eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in days. She stumbled into the library, clasped her hands to her heart, and fell on her knees at my feet.
“Seraphina. Sister. Thank Allsaints I got here in time,” said Od Fredricka, huskily, in Samsamese. “I don’t know how to ask your forgiveness. I was awful. I mocked and abused you. I told the monks you were a monster, and they had you followed.”
I put a hand to my mouth, horrified. Here was the author of Abdo’s heartache.
“I have been alone all my life,” she pleaded, cupping her hands as if I might pour forgiveness into them. “I raised a palisade against the world. It kept hurt at bay, but it gave me no option to let kindness in. I did not—could not—believe in your friendship.
“I see now what a lonely life that was,” said the painter, groveling at my feet. “I don’t want to die alone. I want us all to be together. Forgive me my unjust hostility.”
I looked quickly back at Dame Okra, who raised her hands innocently and said in Jannoula’s voice, “It’s not me animating her. I can’t occupy more than one mind at a time. I can’t even attend to myself while I’m in Dame Okra’s head. For all I know, my body is being eaten by wolves right now.”
I ignored her melodrama. “You did something to her. You changed her mind.”
“I merely opened a few doors and showed her a truth she had hidden from herself. Her loneliness is her own.”
“You did that against her will.”
Jannoula shrugged Dame Okra’s shoulders. “If it was Od Fredricka’s will to be a miserable crank, then her will is an ass. I have no qualms about overriding it.”
Od Fredricka did not understand our Goreddi, but she heard her name spoken. She raised her forehead from the floor and said, “What?”
Dame Okra’s face went momentarily slack, and then she blinked rapidly, clutching the arms of her chair as if she’d grown weak and dizzy. I watched her intently, wondering if this signaled the end of Jannoula’s active possession. It seemed to, but I knew Jannoula’s awareness might still be coiled passively in Dame Okra’s head, observing everything through her eyes and ears.
Dame Okra rose with dignity and strode around the desk. “My dear, dear friend,” she said, taking Od Fredricka’s hands and gently urging her to her feet. “I am so pleased we are together at last.”
They embraced each other like long-lost sisters. I turned away, a nauseous admixture of emotions stewing in my gut.
This is what I’d wanted, the garden, the half-dragons loving each other like family. But how could I possibly want it now?
I quit the library, only to find Blanche and Nedouard haunting the corridor outside, their eyes wide and worried.
“We eavesdropped,” whispered Nedouard.
“She have it voice like donkey!” said Blanche. “How is it ghost in her mind?”
I put my arms around them and walked us back toward the dining room. “Another half-dragon, called Jannoula, has found a way to infest the minds of others,” I said quietly. “Have either of you heard her calling?”
Nedouard shook his head vigorously, but Blanche squeaked in alarm. She reached up and rapped her knuckles on my head. I understood; Jannoula had said she knocked.
Nedouard said, “Is keeping her out as simple as not answering the door?”
“Perhaps,” I said, although I feared not. Jannoula had tricked Dame Okra into reaching out. Could all ityasaari reach out with their mind-fire? How many of us did so without realizing it?
Blanche nestled her head against my shoulder and whimpered. Nedouard said, “What does this Jannoula hope to accomplish by invading people’s minds?”
“She claims she wants to bring us all together,” I said. “Just like me. Beyond that, I’m not sure.” I tried to smile, but didn’t have the stomach for it. I left the pair of them whispering together, and climbed despondently to my room. I had Samsam to prepare for.
I was to leave the next morning; I saw no way out of it. I went through the motions, helping the housemaids wash my clothes and hang them on a line across the carriage yard, but my mind and heart weren’t in it. I fretted.
It seemed futile to protest further against Gianni going to Goredd; Dame Okra was the Ninysh ambassadress, and I couldn’t stop her returning to Goredd with Jannoula in her cranium. Kiggs and Glisselda needed to know what was coming. After hanging the laundry, I returned to my room, pulled out my charm necklace, and flipped the tiny switch on the sweetheart knot.
“Castle Orison, identify yourself, if you please,” said Glisselda seconds later. She must have been sitting at her desk; this was earlier in the day than I usually called.
“Sera—” I began.
“Phina!” she cried. “How lovely to hear your voice. You’re in Segosh? Is Abdo going to be all right?”
Not only had I forgotten to tend my garden, but I’d failed to report to the Queen last night. “He’s having surgery. Dame Okra thinks his hand will be restored, but he’ll need rest. He’ll stay here and return to Goredd in a few weeks.”
Glisselda said, “I’m so sorry. We’ll take good care of him, I promise.”
I was standing at the window, staring down into the street. A troop of Count Pesavolta’s men rode past; I changed the subject. “Is Prince Lucian with you?”
“He’s out making arrests,” she said. “We gave the Sons of St. Ogdo two days to leave town. Most went peaceably, thank Heaven, but a few have decided to make things nasty for our Burrowers—the citizens making our tunnels livable again. The Sons sabotaged some supports and caused a cave-in. A sinkhole swallowed half the apse of St. Jobertus’s Church.”
“Sweet Heavenly Home!” I cried. “Was anyone hurt? The dragon scholars—”
She laughed unexpect
edly. “New St. Jobertus’s, which was empty at the time. The Sons wouldn’t dare crawl around under the old one in Quighole. It’s full of quigs,” she chirped. “Lucian knows whom he’s looking for, but I can’t say more over this device. It’s not secure enough, although I can’t envision a Son of St. Ogdo listening in with a quigutl device of his own. I’d think he would die of irony poisoning.”
I emitted a short chuckle. “I would hope so, but fear not.”
“There you go,” said Glisselda. “That made you laugh. You sounded so grim I’d have thought you were the one slogging through tunnels in darkness.”
I felt like I had been, at that. “I have more news,” I said, leaning my forehead against the windowpane. I took a deep breath and told her about Jannoula, all of it, from my own struggle to her possession of Gianni Patto. How Jannoula had walked Od Fredricka here from the Pinabra and altered Dame Okra’s personality. How she meant to gather all the half-dragons together.
Glisselda was quiet a long time. “Phina, you should have told us,” she said at last.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d be back,” I said hopelessly. “I didn’t know she could find the others, or that she’d want to gather them, or—”
“Of course not,” said Glisselda, sounding cross with me now. “That’s not what I meant. You should have told us how she hurt you.”
“Why?” I asked, my throat tightening.
“Because we’re your friends, and we might have helped you bear it,” said the Queen. “I know Lucian feels just the same, and if he were here, he’d say so.”
It was never my first instinct to tell anyone anything personal. Uncle Orma, my only confidant for years, had been the one person who knew about Jannoula, and he hadn’t truly known. He couldn’t have understood how it felt.
I forgot that other people might care what went on inside my heart.
Glisselda’s words were a comfort, but I’d been more comfortable before she uttered them, when I’d had everything tidily tucked away. Sympathy seemed only to bring all the pain I carried—all the feelings it couldn’t address—to the fore.
She was a sharp little Queen; she gleaned something from my silence. “Tell me,” she said, artfully changing tack, “can Jannoula affect everyone’s mind like this, or is it limited to ityasaari?”
I stepped back from the window, rubbing my eyes with one hand. “Um. Only ityasaari, as far as I know, or else surely she’d have forced her captors to let her out of prison.” I assumed she was still in prison; I hadn’t looked in on her for five years.
“What does she want?” asked Glisselda. “However delightful it must be to occupy Gianni Patto’s mind, I can’t imagine that being an end in itself, can you? She can’t mean to spend all her time being other people.”
“She meant to occupy me and never leave,” I said, my voice quivering.
“But for what? Merely to escape prison, or to use you to some evil purpose? I mean, was she selfish and uncaring, or was she actively malevolent?”
It was the kind of question Lucian Kiggs would have asked. I paced in front of the window, thinking. Was there a difference between doing evil and being evil? I still pitied Jannoula’s imprisonment, her pain and torment, and felt guilt for having sent her back to it. If the misery she experienced every day had been warping her sense of right and wrong even during the time I knew her, how much further had it bent her by now?
“I can’t believe she’s irredeemably bad,” I said slowly, “but she’d stop at nothing to escape her imprisonment. Maybe Gianni’s mind wasn’t ideal for the long term, but she’s got Dame Okra now. That’s real power. The ambassadress has Count Pesavolta’s confidence—and yours.”
“Not mine anymore,” said Glisselda, “but I see. She’s coming back to Goredd.”
“They all are—even Od Fredricka—if you still intend to pursue St. Abaster’s Trap,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Do you think we shouldn’t?” she asked.
I closed my eyes. I wanted to say, No, we absolutely shouldn’t. We don’t know what she’ll do. I didn’t trust myself to be fair, however; the problem needed a clearer, more objective set of eyes. I said, “I leave for Samsam tomorrow. I’ll keep searching until you call me home. Tell Prince Lucian everything. He’ll have ideas. He always does.”
“Of course,” she said, her voice brightening. “And I charge you not to fret unduly.”
“I hear and obey.” I smiled in spite of myself; unduly gave me room to maneuver.
“I kiss your cheeks,” she said, “and Lucian would, too, if he were here.”
I switched off the thnik and flopped back onto the bed, trying to gather all my scattered pieces: gladness at Glisselda’s stouthearted, unflinching friendship; regret that Kiggs was going to hear my history from someone else; and that particular flavor of sorrow that came over me when I pitied Jannoula. I remembered her burned and blistered arms. To some degree, she could not help what she was, any more than Gianni Patto could. Our history—and my fear—got in the way of my trying to reason with her, but what if Kiggs or Glisselda could earn her trust and cooperation? There had to be some way to make this work.
Unsatisfied, I wrested myself out of bed and went to gather my clothes.
Gianni Patto arrived at Dame Okra’s house just after dinner in a doublet and trunk hose fashioned from a tent and with his hair, beard, and eyebrows shaved off. He breathed noisily through his enormous red mouth, and his pale eyes drifted, unfocused. Dame Okra served him a late supper, cooing as she made a lake of gravy in his turnip mash. He was so tall that he sat on the floor, his clawed feet tucked under him, to eat off the table; he had no concept of utensils. Dame Okra spit on a napkin and dabbed at his pasty face. I could watch no more. I went to bed early, citing tomorrow’s departure as an excuse, and no one minded that I went.
I washed my scales and tended my garden; I had barely fallen asleep when I was awakened by my window rattling. I opened my eyes blearily, closed them again, and then sat bolt upright as I realized what I’d seen.
Someone was climbing in my window.
Don’t be alarmed, said a familiar voice in my head. It’s only me.
I was on my feet in an instant, rushing to help Abdo climb inside. For a moment we hugged each other tightly, saying nothing; I could feel that his left hand, at the small of my back, was stiffly bandaged. I finally let him go and closed the window. Abdo bounded over and flopped across the end of the bed, grinning enormously.
“I deduce from your unorthodox entry that you made a similarly unauthorized exit from the palasho’s infirmary,” I said, sitting beside him.
They need more guards in that palasho, said Abdo merrily, toying with one of his hair knots. Any determined rascal could get in or out.
I suspected most rascals would find the palasho walls a more serious impediment.
“I don’t like to dampen your enthusiasm,” I said, injecting a sisterly sternness into my voice and pointing at his bound wrist, “but I was told that after surgery you’re supposed to rest for a few weeks. As much as I want to take you with me, I can’t in good conscience drag you to Samsam if your arm—”
Dr. Belestros didn’t do the surgery yet, said Abdo, sounding surprised. He was to do it tomorrow.
I opened my mouth and then closed it again. Dame Okra had lied to me.
Why? So I would leave without him? So she—or Jannoula—could take him to Goredd and keep an eye on him? Seize his mind at leisure?
Abdo was holding up the limb in question, wrapped from forearm to fingertips. It doesn’t hurt. Anyway, it was fifty-fifty that the surgery would even work. I read his notes.
“You should give it a chance,” I said. “How will you do handstands now?”
One-handed, he said archly. I want to stay with you, Phina madamina. How will you find your Samsamese ityasaari without me? Who will introduce you to the ityasaari in Porphyry, or persuade them to come south? You can’t walk in and order them around.
I caugh
t a rough note in his voice. “Are you homesick?” I asked. “Because you can have this surgery and then go home on your own.”
Not until after I’ve been dragged back to Goredd by Dame Grumpus. Not until your war is over. His voice grew tearful. I do miss Porphyry. I miss Auntie Naia, and the sea, and my bed, and eggplant, and … That’s not even the point. I want to stay with you.
I took his bandaged hand between mine. “Let’s ask Nedouard how hard it will be to care for your wrist while traveling. If he says you can go—”
Abdo pulled away and rushed toward the door. “Quietly!” I whispered loudly, following right on his heels. “I don’t want Dame Okra to know you’re here.” She, or Jannoula, didn’t want Abdo coming with me to Samsam.
Nedouard’s room was in the attic. Climbing the banisters one-handed barely slowed Abdo down. A light still shone under the doctor’s door, and Nedouard answered Abdo’s knock at once. The ghostly pale face behind him was Blanche’s; her eyes lit up at the sight of Abdo.
“More insomniacs!” cried the doctor. “Come in, come in.”
The ceiling sloped under the eaves, making the room feel smaller than it was. Nedouard had moved all his belongings here: bottles, crucibles, stretched glass vessels, apothecary ingredients, and—squirreled away in crannies—a collection of shiny objects.
One of Blanche’s mechanical spiders was splayed open on the floor, as if they’d been dissecting it. She noticed me staring at the gears and said, “I am sad to hearing it Josquin be broken. He must to want a spider, need it legs, no? Legs on him.”
I nodded tentatively, not sure I understood. Nedouard, his blue eyes gentle above his hooked beak, said, “You are kind to think of him, sister.” Blanche smiled minutely and gathered her spider into a sack. Abdo helped her, and she kissed his forehead before quitting the room.
“She’s a shy little thing,” said Nedouard, rubbing his liver-spotted scalp. “Don’t take it personally. How may I help you?”
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