Shadow Scale

by Rachel Hartman

  I kissed his forehead and let him go.

  Blanche, with quigutl assistance, restored Glisselda’s communication box, and we finally heard from Ardmagar Comonot. He’d reached the Kerama, but not without difficulty. “We were outnumbered two to one,” he said, “but you would not believe how those exiles fought. They were impassioned. I’ve never seen the like. And to some degree, we got lucky. I made it to the Keramaseye—the great amphitheater in the sky, where the Ker meets—and took up the Opal of Office. All around us, the fighting died as the Old Ard saw what I had done, and they remembered there was more to being dragons than their pernicious anti-human ideology: there are traditions, and protocols, and the correct order of things. And the correct order of succession is that I may defend myself, with law or with talons. No more cowardly backstabbing or costly war.”

  He had ended the war; Kiggs and Glisselda congratulated him heartily. There were still months, or perhaps years, of debate and negotiation ahead—whether to disband the Censors altogether, how to integrate the exiles, whether the Ardmagar should be elected and be subject to term limits—but Comonot seemed to relish the prospect. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes. We’re debating instead of biting each other’s throats out, and that is entirely for the good.”

  I told him about Orma’s condition, and he grew quiet. “Eskar may have insights into what the mind-pearl trigger could be,” he said at last. “It will be several months before she can travel, however. She’s imparting memories to her egg-to-be, but once she’s laid it, she can leave it in a hatchery.”

  Glisselda met my eyes with a quizzical look, not sure how to respond to this news. “I’m so pleased for you, Ardmagar,” I said, although I was a little disheartened for my uncle.

  “Don’t congratulate me yet,” said the old saar gruffly. “I see how these Porphyrian-born hatchlings carry on. There really is more to this than neck-biting, I fear. And, Seraphina,” he added, “I heard your tone just then, and recognized how it contradicted your words. That’s how astute and sensitive my experience has made me.”

  I rolled my eyes for the benefit of the royal cousins. “And?” I said.

  “And you needn’t fear for your uncle,” he said. “Eskar has done her service to the Tanamoot, and she’ll be at his side again, first opportunity she has. Once I would have judged her harshly for it and sent her to be pulled apart. Now I only marvel at the capaciousness of her heart.”

  Kiggs and Glisselda were married before the end of the year.

  The three of us agreed it should happen. Consensus came surprisingly easily, although I think we each had different reasons. Glisselda couldn’t bear the thought of marrying anyone else; if she had to marry someone, let it be the dear old friend who knew her better than anyone and would keep their partnership strictly political. Kiggs, for his part, felt practically married already—to Goredd. It was his grandmother’s wish that the cousins should rule together, there was duty and honor involved, and I was able to convince him that I didn’t mind.

  And as strange as it may sound, I didn’t. We three knew what we were to each other; we would plan and negotiate and build our own way forward, and it was nobody’s business but ours.

  Glisselda was still a consummate traditionalist in her own way; the wedding had to have the proper nightfest, cathedral service, wedding journey, and all. It was to be Goredd’s wedding, the opening salvo of the new reign of peace.

  A nightfest is exactly what it sounds like: it lasts all night. First came feasting, then entertainments, then dancing (once dinner was sufficiently digested), then more entertainments, then strategic napping (followed by vehement denials of napping), and finally the service at St. Gobnait’s cathedral just as the sun was coming up.

  I organized the entertainments, of course. It was both strange and comforting to fall back into that work. I performed on flute and oud over the course of the evening, and danced twice, unobtrusively, with my prince.

  What I didn’t anticipate was the awed silences. The way people paid special attention when I played, watched me dancing, gathered in a silent circle around me while I took my refreshment, and sneaked tugs at my gown.

  These people had seen something. Even in the tunnels, I’d heard, they’d been able to see Pandowdy’s light and feel the rumble of his voice. A stone had been cast, and we’d only just begun to see its ripples.

  I shared a carriage to the cathedral with Dame Okra. “You’re awfully sanguine,” she said, watching me with carefully affected casualness. “You weren’t overrun, so you won’t know this, but Jannoula’s mind leaked into ours sometimes. She knew what the prince was to you.”

  “Do all the ityasaari know?” I said, less alarmed than she probably hoped.

  She shrugged, a smirk on her froggy face. “Possibly. I just have one question: What will you do about the fact that Queen Glisselda will be expected to produce an heir?”

  Absurdly, I found her nastiness—the sheer normalcy of it—reassuring. I said, “We shall have long meetings where Kiggs agonizes and Glisselda teases him. That’s the pattern so far.”

  “And you?” she said, leering. “What do you do?”

  “I do what I have always done,” I said, suddenly realizing the truth of it. “I reach across and bring the worlds together.”

  Nothing was just one thing; there were worlds within worlds. Those of us who trod the line between were blessed and burdened with both.

  I stepped from the carriage into sunlight, into the crowd, smiling. I walked myself into the world.

  My new suite had belonged to Selda’s mother, Princess Dionne. The bedroom had been entirely refurbished, but I hadn’t let them touch the sitting room; I liked the dark paneling and heavy carven furniture. Selda had insisted I take the harpsichord that once graced the south solar, and I couldn’t resist. It fit awkwardly in the room, but what else was I to do with all this space?

  I was at the instrument that rainy afternoon when a page boy showed him in. I didn’t look up; this was going to take all my courage, and I needed a little more music to get there. He wouldn’t mind my being rude.

  He seated himself near the door to wait me out. I had been playing one of Viridius’s fantasias, but I switched smoothly to my mother’s composition, a fugue she’d written in honor of her brother. I loved it beyond all reckoning. It captured him perfectly: the solidity of the bass notes, the rationality of the middle ranges, and then the occasional, unexpected twinkle in the treble. Stillness and motion and a touch of sorrow—my mother’s sorrow. She had missed him.

  I missed him, too, but I could bear this. I took a deep breath.

  I rolled the last arpeggios and then turned to face him. Orma still wore the mustard-colored habit of St. Gobnait’s Order. I twisted his ring on my finger, hoping I’d deduced its meaning correctly, that he’d really made a mind-pearl.

  Finding it would be a challenge.

  He was looking not at me but at the coffered ceiling, his mouth open slightly. I said, “Brother Norman?”

  He startled. “I interrupt your practice,” he said.

  That had been intentional. I said, “Did you recognize that song?”

  He goggled at me, apparently trying to parse the surprising question. That was how it had to be from now on, if we were to find the untidy edges of any remaining memories. We would have to take them by surprise.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last.

  I took anything other than a negative answer as encouraging. “Did you like it?” I pressed.

  He looked blank. “The abbot said you need an amanuensis and wish to interview me, but I have no interest in the position. I suspect you would like to continue your earlier line of inquiry, but that will be fruitless. I have no memory of you before Jannoula brought me here. I only want to finish my studies and go back—”

  “Are you really so interested in monastic history?” I asked.

  Wintry rain lashed the windows. Orma pushed up his spectacles; his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “No,” he
said at last. “But the destultia I take for my heart is an emotional suppressant. I’m not interested in anything, per se.”

  “It leaves you unable to fly when you are full-sized.” I’d been reading up.

  He nodded. “That’s why we don’t all take it as a matter of course.”

  “Do you remember what it’s like to fly?”

  He raised his dark, inscrutable eyes to mine. “How could I not? If they cut that out of me, they’d have to take too much. I’d have no memory … left.…” His gaze grew distant for a moment.

  “There are pieces missing,” I said. “You’ve noticed.”

  He fingered the scar on his scalp. “I hadn’t, until you suggested it. I would chalk it up to diagnosis bias, but …” His expression was like a closed curtain. “There are a few things that don’t make sense.”

  There was some inherent trait in him, some tendency to question, that had gotten him into as much trouble as emotions, if not more. Surely I could revive that curiosity if I prodded. “That song I was playing? You taught me that. You were my teacher.”

  His eyes were obscured behind the glare off his glasses. The wind rattled the windows.

  “Come work with me,” I said. “You can be weaned off the destultia; I know the trick of it. We will rediscover what they’ve stolen.” I held out my hand and waggled the ring at him. “I think you made yourself a mind-pearl before you were caught.”

  He tented his long fingers. “If you’re wrong, if I really do have pyrocardia, I will very likely die.”

  “Ye-es,” I said slowly, wondering whether pyrocardia was something the Censors might have given him somehow, as a surprise present. I’d have to ask Eskar when she arrived. “I suppose you might die. But are you finding monastic history a very compelling reason to live?”

  “I’m not human,” he said. “I don’t require a reason to live. Living is my default condition.”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed, and tears welled in my eyes. That answer was so quintessentially Orma, distilled to his elemental Orma-ness.

  He watched me laugh as if I were an inexplicably noisy bird. “I’m not convinced this is worth your time or mine,” he said.

  My heart contracted painfully. “Don’t you ever wish you could fly again?”

  He shrugged. “If it means dying in flames, my wishes are irrelevant.”

  I took that as a definite yes. “You used to fly with your mind. Metaphorically. You used to be interested in everything. You asked inconvenient questions all the time.” My voice broke; I cleared my throat.

  He stared at me but said nothing.

  My heart sank. “Aren’t you curious, even a little?”

  “No,” he said.

  He rose as if to go. I stood, too, and paced toward the windows, despairing. I couldn’t make him stop taking destultia, or force him to be my friend. He could walk out of the room and refuse to see me again, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  From behind me came the sound of a bench scraping on the floor, and then a few tentative notes on the harpsichord, like a child might make, cautiously approaching the instrument for the first time.

  I kept my eyes on the rivulets running down the glass.

  There was a chord, and then another, and then a small explosion of sparkly notes—the opening strains of Viridius’s Suite Infanta.

  I turned sharply, my heart in my throat. Orma’s eyes were closed. He played the first three lines, then faltered and stopped.

  He opened his eyes and looked into mine.

  “One thing they can’t remove without damaging other systems is muscle memory,” he said quietly. “My hands did that. What was it?”

  “A fantasia you used to play,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “I’m still not curious. But …” He stared at the rain. “I begin to wish I could be.”

  I gestured to him to move over on the bench. He made room for me, and we sat together the rest of that afternoon, not talking, but letting our hands walk over the keys and remember.

  This book was a beast to write. The following people ensured I was not eaten:

  Arwen Brenneman and Rebecca Sherman, whom I can never thank enough; Phoebe North and the Glassboard Gang; Naithan Bossé and Earle Peach, who got me thinking about harmonics at just the right moment; Inchoiring Minds and Madrigalians; Becca, who showed me the taiga; Tamora Pierce, who knows about battling Grendels; Rose Curtin and Steph Sinclair, consultants to the clueless; Iarla Ó Lionáird; Jacob Arcadelt; Josquin des Prez; Bessie, my trusty bike; and my mother, who’s always happy to talk about art.

  I gratefully acknowledge the late Douglas Adams, to whom I owe the idea of an inside-out house, and Pink Floyd, to whom there are more sly allusions in this book than I can count.

  Finally, thanks to Jim, Dan, Mallory, and the fabulous folks at Random House, who have been unflaggingly supportive and kind. And to Scott, Byron, and Úna, my heart and home.

  AT CASTLE ORISON

  Seraphina Dombegh—our charming heroine, often called Phina, half-dragon

  Queen Lavonda—ill and abdicated

  Rufus, Dionne, and Laurel—Lavonda’s unlucky children, all dead

  Queen Glisselda—plucky new head of state

  Prince Lucian Kiggs—Glisselda’s cousin and fiancé

  Viridius—court composer, Seraphina’s erstwhile employer

  Lars—designer of trebuchets, lover of loud music, half-dragon

  Abdo—dancer and scamp, possible property of a god, half-dragon

  Tython—Abdo’s pious grandfather

  Dame Okra Carmine—undiplomatic Ninysh ambassador, half-dragon

  Alberdt—resistant guardsman

  dozy page boy—sleeping on the job

  IN NINYS

  Josquin—Dame Okra’s distant cousin, a chin-bearded herald

  Captain Moy—leader of the Eight, the authoritative chin beard

  Nan—Moy’s doughty daughter

  Des Osho—the Eight, Phina’s armed escort through Ninys

  Nedouard Basimo—kleptomaniac plague doctor, half-dragon

  Blanche—reclusive hermit, fond of spiders, half-dragon

  Od Fredricka des Uurne—muralist with a chip on her shoulder, half-dragon

  Gianni Patto—claw-footed bogeyman of the Ninysh mountains, half-dragon

  Count Pesavolta—ruler of Ninys and reluctant funder of quests

  IN SAMSAM

  Hanse—terse old huntsman who escorts Phina through Samsam

  Rodya—unwashed young bravo, the other escort

  Josef, Earl of Apsig—Lars’s half brother, disdainer of dragonkind, up to no good

  Jannoula—banished from Phina’s mind, half-dragon

  Ingar, Earl of Gasten—lover of books, learner of languages, disciple of Jannoula, half-dragon

  IN PORPHYRY

  Naia—Abdo’s favorite auntie

  Paulos Pende—elderly priest with a powerful mind, leader of the half-dragons, or ityasaari, in Porphyry

  Zythia Perdixis Camba—statuesque lady, unexpectedly familiar, ityasaari

  Amalia Perdixis Lita—Camba’s aged mother, Agogoi

  Mina—winged officer of the law, ityasaari

  Brasidas—blind market singer, ityasaari

  Phloxia—shark-toothed lawyer (literally), ityasaari

  Gaios and Gelina—handsome fleet-footed twins, ityasaari

  DRACONIC FRIENDS AND FOES

  Ardmagar Comonot—deposed leader of dragonkind, bothering the Queen

  Orma—Phina’s uncle, on the run

  Eskar—former undersecretary of the dragon embassy; running with Orma, or pursuing her own plans?

  Ikat—physician, civic leader of the dragon exiles in Porphyry

  Colibris—Ikat’s daughter, forever young

  Lalo—exiled saarantras, eager to go home

  Mitha—quigutl of Lab Four, friend to Eskar, insurrectionist and folksinger

  General Zira—prominent Loyalist general

  General Palonn—prominent g
eneral for the Old Ard

  General Laedi—new strategist for the Old Ard, the butcher of Homand-Eynn

  NOBLE KNIGHTS

  Sir Cuthberte Pettybone—knight of Phina’s acquaintance, too old for war, too young to die

  Sir Maurizio Foughfaugh—erstwhile squire of Phina’s acquaintance, still a dedicated nuisance

  Sir Joshua Pender—training the next generation of dracomachists

  Squire Anders—the next generation, easily dazzled

  Agogoi—founding families of Porphyry, now make up the ruling Assembly

  Allsaints—all the Saints in Heaven. Not a deity, exactly; more like a collective

  ard—Mootya for “order, correctness”; may also denote a battalion of dragons

  Ardmagar—title held by the leader of dragonkind; translates roughly to “supreme general”

  aurochs—large, wild cattlebeast, extinct in our world; existed in Europe until the Renaissance

  Bibliagathon—great library of Porphyry

  Blystane—capital of Samsam

  Castle Orison—Goreddi seat of government, in Lavondaville

  Censors—extra-governmental dragon agency charged with maintaining draconic purity

  Chakhon—Porphyrian god of chance, sometimes called Merry Chance

  Comonot’s Treaty—established peace between Goredd and dragonkind

  destultia—draconic drug; an emotional suppressant, analgesic, and pyrocardia cure

  Donques—village in the Ninysh alps

  doublet—short, fitted, and often padded man’s jacket

  dracomachia—martial art for fighting dragons; invented by St. Ogdo

  excision—surgical removal of memories from deviant dragons, performed at the discretion of the Censors

  Fnark—Samsamese village, site of St. Abaster’s shrine

  gaar—Porphyrian anchovy paste, more delicious than it sounds