Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

  “Prince Lucian has given us his account of your encounter with the dragon Imlann,” said the Queen, frowning as she followed the newskin with her eyes. “I would like to hear your version, Maid Dombegh.”

  I told all I could, underscoring our commitment to the peace and our desire to uncover the truth, the better to protect the Ardmagar.

  The Queen listened impassively; Comonot seemed touched that we’d undertaken to measure this threat. One might almost have taken them for their opposites: Comonot the sympathetic human, Queen Lavonda the dispassionate saar. Perhaps those qualities were what had enabled them to reach an agreement after centuries of distrust and war. Each saw something familiar in the other.

  “Maid Dombegh has committed no material violation of the treaty,” said the Queen. “I see no justification for holding her. Possession of a transmitting device is against the law, but I am inclined to overlook that, if she gives it back.”

  I plucked the earring from the cord around my neck and handed it to Orma.

  Comonot addressed Orma. “By rights, I should revoke your scholarship and travel permissions for your unauthorized transformation. However, I’m impressed with your initiative and your drive to protect your Ardmagar.”

  Apparently I’d lent sufficient color to that part of the story. Orma saluted at the sky, saar fashion.

  “I elect to waive your penalties,” said Comonot, glancing sidelong at the Queen as if to gauge her reaction to his magnanimity. She looked merely tired. “We shall discuss the best course of action at council. A lone malcontent poses little threat to me, thanks to the fine security of my hosts, but he is still in breach of treaty and must be apprehended.”

  Orma saluted again and said, “Ardmagar, may I take advantage of this unexpected audience to petition you privately?”

  Comonot assented with a wave of his thick fingers. The Queen and her attendants left for breakfast, leaving Comonot with just a small retinue of saarantrai. I made to leave also, but Orma’s hand on my elbow restrained me. “Would you dismiss your retainers as well, Ardmagar?” said Orma.

  The Ardmagar complied, to my astonishment. Orma must have seemed particularly harmless, despite his notorious father.

  “All in ard,” said Orma. “This involves the Censors, and I did not wish—”

  “I do not see that your family could sink much further,” said the Ardmagar. “Quickly, if you please. I find this body gets irritable without its breakfast.”

  Orma squinted without his spectacles. “I have been hounded by the Censors for sixteen years: relentlessly tested, monitored, retested, my research sabotaged. How much is enough? When will they be satisfied that I am all I should be?”

  Comonot shifted warily in his seat. “That is a question for the Censors, scholar. They fall outside my jurisdiction; indeed, I am as subject to them as you are. That is as must be. Their neutrality keeps checks on us when we descend into the monkey mind.”

  “There is nothing you can do?”

  “There is something you could do, scholar: voluntary excision. I have one scheduled myself, almost as soon as I get back.” He tapped his large head; his plastered-down hair gave it the appearance of a seaweed-covered rock. “I shall have all emotional detritus removed. It’s unexpectedly refreshing.”

  Orma dared not look disturbed; I hoped the little muscle working near his jawline was noticeable only to me. “That would not do, Ardmagar. They inevitably remove memories as well, and that would spoil my research. But what if I hunted Imlann down?” Orma seemed not to know when to quit. “Would that not prove where my loyalty lies, or put the state in my debt—”

  “The state does not repay debts in this fashion, as you well know,” said Comonot.

  The quickness of his interjection raised my hackles; he was lying. “Basind shouldn’t be here, but he is,” I snapped. “Eskar explicitly said it was a favor to his mother, for turning in her husband.”

  “I don’t recall the case, but that is certainly not policy,” said Comonot, his voice a warning.

  “Seraphina,” said my uncle, his hand hovering near my arm.

  I ignored him; I wasn’t finished. “Fine. Call it an exceptional circumstance, but could not an exception be made also for my uncle, who has done noth—”

  “Scholar Orma, who is this person?” asked the Ardmagar, suddenly on his feet.

  I turned toward my uncle, openmouthed. His eyes were closed, his fingers tented in front of his chin as if he were praying. He inhaled deeply through his nose, opened his eyes, and said, “Seraphina is my nameless sister’s daughter, Ardmagar.”

  Comonot’s eyes bugged alarmingly. “No … not with that …”

  “With him, yes. The human, C—”

  “Do not say his name,” ordered the Ardmagar, suddenly the most dispassionate of saarantrai. He considered a moment. “You reported that she died childless.”

  “Yes, I reported that,” said Orma. My heart broke a little along with his voice.

  “The Censors know you lied,” guessed the Ardmagar shrewdly. “That’s a mark against you; that’s why they won’t let you go. Odd that it was not reported to the Ker.”

  Orma shrugged. “As you say, Ardmagar, the Censors aren’t accountable to you.”

  “No, but you are. Your scholar’s visa is revoked, saar, as of this instant. You will return home; you will put yourself down for excision. Failure to report to the surgeons within one week’s time will result in a declaration of magna culpa. Do you understand?”

  “I do.”

  Comonot left us. I turned to Orma so full of rage and horror and sorrow that for a moment I could not speak. “I assumed he knew,” I cried. “Eskar knew.”

  “Eskar used to be with the Censors,” said Orma softly.

  I threw up my hands in futile despair, pacing around him; Orma stood very, very still, staring at nothing. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is my fault. I ruin everything, I—”

  “No,” said Orma evenly. “I should have sent you out of the room.”

  “I assumed you intended to introduce me to him, like with Eskar!”

  “No. I kept you here because I … I wanted you here. I thought it would help.” His eyes widened in horror at himself. “They’re right. I am emotionally compromised beyond redemption.”

  I wanted so badly to touch his shoulder or take his hand so he would know he was not alone in the world, but I couldn’t do it. He would swat me away like a mosquito.

  Yet he’d taken my elbow and wanted me to stay. I struggled with tears. “So you’ll be going home?”

  He looked at me like my head had fallen off. “To the Tanamoot? Never. It’s not just a matter of sweeping away ‘emotional detritus,’ not for me. The cancer runs too deep. They’d excise every memory of Linn. Every memory of you.”

  “But you’d be alive. Magna culpa means if they find you, they can kill you on sight.” Papa would have been shocked at how many times I’d played the lawyer tonight.

  He raised his eyebrows. “If Imlann can survive in the south for sixteen years, I imagine I can manage a few.” He turned to go, then thought better of it. He removed his earring and handed it back to me. “You may still need this.”

  “Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—”

  “That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.”

  I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.

  As was his wont, he bid me no farewell. The full weight of everything that had befallen me, on this longest night of the year, landed squarely upon me, and I stood a very long time, staring at nothing.

  I’d been up all night; I staggered off to bed.

  I can’t usually sleep during the day, but in truth I did not wish to be awake. Awake was a distinctly unpleasant state to be in. I hurt all over, and when I wasn’t fretting abou
t my uncle, I could not stop thinking about Lucian Kiggs.

  An indignant pounding woke me halfway through the afternoon. I had fallen asleep in my clothes, so I rolled out of bed and staggered to the door, barely opening my eyes. A shimmering being, pearly and opalescent, brushed past me imperiously: Princess Glisselda. A gentler presence, who led me to a chair, was Millie.

  “What did you do to Lucian?” cried Glisselda, looming over me, hands on her hips.

  I couldn’t pull myself into full wakefulness. I stared at her, uncomprehending. And what was there to say? That I had saved his life and made him hate me, all in one go? That I had felt things I should not, and I was sorry?

  “The council has just adjourned,” she said, pacing toward the hearth and back. “Lucian told us all about encountering the rogue in the countryside, about your bravery in persuading the dragon not to kill you. You’re quite the pair of investigative heroes.”

  “What did the council decide?” I croaked, rubbing an eye with the heel of my hand.

  “We’re sending a group of dragons—a petit ard, we’re calling it—into the country, led by Eskar.” She toyed with her long string of pearls, tying it in a large knot. “They’re to stay in their saarantrai except in an emergency; they’ll start at the column of rooks as one place they know Imlann has recently been and attempt to sniff him out from there.

  “But you see, here’s what perplexes me.” She scowled and shook the knotted necklace at me. “You were so helpful and knowledgeable, one would expect Lucian to be singing your praises unto Heaven’s dome. He’s not. I know he arrested you on little pretext. He’s mad at you, evidently, but he won’t say why; he’s shut himself in his beastly tower. How do I mediate if I don’t know what’s going on? I can’t have you two at odds!”

  I must have reeled a bit, because Glisselda snapped, “Millie! Make this poor woman some tea!”

  Tea helped, although it also seemed to moisten my eyes. “My eyes are watering,” I said, just to clarify to everyone.

  “It’s all right,” said Glisselda. “I’d weep too if Lucian were that angry with me.”

  I couldn’t work out what to tell her. This had never happened to me before: I always knew which things were tellable and which were not, and while I had not liked lying, it had never felt like such a burden. I tried to remember my rules: simpler was always better. I said, my voice shaky, “He’s angry because I lied to him.”

  “Lucian can be touchy about that,” said Glisselda sagely. “Why did you lie?”

  I gaped at her as if she’d asked why I drew breath. I couldn’t tell her that lying wasn’t so much something I did as something I was, or that I had wanted to reassure Kiggs that I was human, desperate that he not be frightened of me because I had known, there among the blowing snow and ash, that I …

  I could not even think the word with his fiancée right here, and that was itself another lie. It never ended.

  “We—we were so terrified after facing Imlann,” I stammered. “I spoke without thinking, trying to reassure him. Honestly, in that moment, I forgot I even had the—”

  “I see the open sincerity in your face. Say just that to him, and it will be well.”

  Of course, I had already said that to him, more or less, and it had made things worse. Princess Glisselda stepped toward the door, Millie like a shadow behind her. “There will be a meeting between you, and you will make up. I shall arrange it.”

  I rose and curtsied. She added, “You should know: Earl Josef was absent from the palace all day yesterday. Lucian mentioned your suspicions, and I made him ask around. Apsig claims he was in town visiting his mistress but has not been forthcoming with her name.” She looked almost apologetic. “I did mention your expedition to him at the ball. He wanted to know why Lucian would speak with you. It was ill-advised, perhaps.

  “But,” she added, brightening again, “our eye is upon him now.”

  The girls took their leave, but Glisselda paused in the doorway, raising a finger as if to scold me. “I can’t have you and Lucian feuding! I need you!”

  I stumbled into the other room and flopped back onto my bed when she had gone, wishing I shared her optimism, wondering whether she’d be so keen to patch things up between us if she knew what I held unspoken in my heart.

  I awoke at midnight in a panic because something was on fire.

  I sat bolt upright, or tried to; the morass of my feather mattress pulled me back down as if the bed tick were trying to eat me. I was drenched in sweat. The bed curtains wafted gently, illuminated by the perfectly tame fire in the hearth. Had I been dreaming? I recalled no dream, and I knew the fire was … still burning. I could almost smell smoke; I could feel the heat of it inside my head. Was something happening to the garden of grotesques?

  Saints’ dogs. I’d have believed I was going mad if things like this didn’t happen in my mind all the time.

  I flopped back in the bed, closed my eyes, and entered my garden. There was smoke in the distance; I ran until I reached the edge of Pandowdy’s swamp. Mercifully, Pandowdy itself was underwater, sleeping, and I was able to pick my way past it. It was the least human of all my grotesques, a sluglike, wallowing creature. It filled me with pity and dread, but it was one of mine as surely as Lars was.

  At the heart of the swamp crouched Fruit Bat, and he was on fire.

  Or not exactly: the flames came from my memory box, which he clutched to him, his entire body curled around it. He whimpered again, which snapped me out of my shock. I rushed over, grabbed the thing—it seared my fingers—and hurled it into the black water. It hissed, throwing up a cloud of foul steam. I knelt before Fruit Bat—he was just a child!—and examined his bare stomach, the insides of his arms, his face. He had no visible blisters, but his skin was so dark that I wasn’t sure I would recognize the look of burns. I cried, “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he said, prodding himself with his fingertips.

  St. Masha’s stone, he was talking to me now. I struggled with fear as I said, “What were you doing? Prying open my box of secrets?”

  He said, “The box caught fire.”

  “Because you tried to look in it!”

  “Never, madamina.” He crossed his thumbs, making his hands into a bird, the Porphyrian gesture for supplication. “I know what’s yours and what’s mine. It burst into flames last night. I threw myself upon it so it would not harm you. Have I done well?”

  I turned sharply toward the water; the tin box bobbed, but the fire had not gone out. I was beginning to feel the pain of the flames myself, now that Fruit Bat wasn’t smothering them with his body.

  I knew, without knowing how, that it had caught fire when Imlann landed in the snowy field, just as it had flooded at the sight of Comonot. It was extremely fortunate that Fruit Bat had leaped upon it when he did; if I had been seized by a memory while Imlann bore down on us, it would have been more than just an imaginary box in flames.

  I turned back to the boy. The whites of his eyes shone starkly against his dark face. “What’s your name? Your real name,” I said.

  “Abdo,” he said. The name hit a light chord of déjà vu, but I could not place it.

  “And where are you, Abdo?”

  “I am at an inn, with my family. Holding the box gave me a headache; I was in bed all day. My grandfather is very worried, but I can sleep now and ease his heart.”

  The burning box had been causing him pain, but he’d held on to it for more than a day. “How did you know to help?” I said.

  “There are two sacred causes in this world,” he said, holding up his pinkie and ring finger. “Chance and necessity. By chance, I was there to help when you had need.”

  He was a little philosopher. Maybe in his country they all were. I opened my mouth to question him further, but he put his hands upon my cheeks and gazed at me earnestly. “I heard you, sought you, and have found you. I have reached for you, across space and sense and the laws of nature. I do not know how.”

  “Do you speak to other
s this way? Do others speak to you?” My fear melted away. He was so innocent.

  He shrugged. “I only know three other ityasaari, in Porphyry. But you know them too: they are here. You named them Newt and Miserere and Pelican Man. None of them speak to me with their minds, but then, none of them called me. Only you.”

  “When did I call you?”

  “I heard your flute.”

  Just like Lars.

  “Madamina,” he said, “I must sleep. My grandfather has been worried.”

  He released me and bowed. I bowed back uncertainly, and then looked toward the flaming box. Pandowdy burbled underwater and gave an irritable flop of its tail, sending the box bobbing back toward me. I felt the headache intensely now. I could not put off dealing with the box; the memory would surely engulf me against my will if I suppressed it, just as the other one had. I glanced at Abdo, but he had curled on his side, asleep under a large skunk cabbage. I guided the box toward shore with a sturdy cattail.

  The box exploded at my touch in a burst of pyrotechnic hysteria. I choked on the smoke, wondering how it was possible that I could taste anger and feel the smell of green against my skin.

  I burst from the mountainside and fly into the sun. My tail lash buries the exit under an avalanche. The combined mass of twelve old generals will exceed this icefall; I have merely bought myself a delay. I must not waste it. I dive east, with the wind, careening through low lenticular clouds into a glacial cirque.

  There is a cave beneath the glacier, if I can reach it. I skim the chalky meltwater too closely; the cold scalds my ventrum. I push off the moraine with a spray of stones, elevate quickly to avoid pinnacles of ice sharp enough to gut me.

  I hear a roar and a rumble behind me, high up the mountain. The generals and my father are free, but I have flown fast enough. Too fast: I slam into the edge of the cirque, send shale skittering down the cliff face, and worry that they will spot the crushed lichens. I writhe into the cave, blue ice melting at my touch, easing my passage.

  I hear them cross the sky, screaming, even over the roar of the glacial streams. I move deeper in, lest I make too much vapor and give myself away.