Seraphina

by Rachel Hartman

“You disregarded the message out of disgust for the messenger.”

  “Sit down, Seraphina,” he said, gesturing toward an upholstered chair carved with curlicues and embroidered with elegant, improbable foliage. His room was all velvet brocade and rich dark oak; the very ceiling had large carved pinecones protruding from the center of every coffer, like some giant’s scaly fingertips. This wing of the palace maintained a more elaborate standard of decor than my own.

  He’d had time to sober up since our talk in the bishop’s library, and he now held me in a gaze as piercing as Orma’s. He seated himself across from me, thoughtfully running his tongue over his teeth.

  “You must think me a superstitious fool,” he said, tucking his hands into the voluminous sleeves of his embroidered houppelande.

  I needed more information before I could reply; it was possible I did.

  “I admit,” he said, “I have been. You are something that should not be. Dragons have difficulty with counterfactuals.”

  I almost laughed. “How can I be counterfactual? I’m right here.”

  “If you were a ghost claiming the same, should I believe you? Should I not rather consider you a symptom of my own madness? You showed me, at the cathedral, that you have some substance. I wish to understand the nature of that substance.”

  “All right,” I said, with some apprehension.

  “You have a foot in both worlds: if you have maternal memories, you’ve seen what it is to be a dragon, contrasted with what it’s like to be a saarantras, contrasted yet again with what it’s like to be human—or nearly so.”

  This I was prepared to handle. “I have experienced those states, yes.”

  He leaned forward. “And what do you think of being a dragon?”

  “I—I find it unpleasant, frankly. And confusing.”

  “Do you? Maybe that’s not unexpected. It’s very different.”

  “I tire of the incessant wind-vector calculations, and the stench of the entire world.”

  He tented his fat fingers and studied my face. “But you have some understanding, perhaps, of how alien this shape is to us. The world around looks different; we easily get lost, both inside ourselves and out. If I as saarantras react differently than I as dragon would react, then who am I now, really?

  “Do I love you?” he asked. “It occurs to me that one possible motive for defending you would be love. Only I’m not sure what that one’s like. I have no way to measure it.”

  “You don’t love me,” I said flatly.

  “But maybe I did for just a moment? No?”

  “No.”

  He had withdrawn his arm from his sleeve entirely; his hand emerged from the neck hole of his houppelande and scratched his jowly chin. I stared, astonished by this maneuver. He said, “Love requires extreme correction. It’s the emotional state we teach our students to guard against most carefully. It presents an actual danger to a saar because, you see, our scholars who fall in love don’t want to come back. They don’t want to be dragons anymore.”

  “Like my mother,” I said, crossing my arms tightly.

  “Exactly!” he cried, insensible of the fact that I might take offense at his tone. “My government has clamped down on all hyperemotionality, but especially love, and it is right that we have done so. But being here, being this, I find myself curious to feel everything, once. They’ll mop up my mind when I get home—I won’t lose myself to it—but I want to measure this danger, stare right into the fearsome jaws of love, survive its deadly blast, and find better ways to treat others who suffer this malady.”

  I almost laughed. As much heartache as I’d already endured over Kiggs, I could not disagree with the words fearsome or malady, but I couldn’t let him think I approved of his plan, either. “If you ever do experience love, I hope it generates some sympathy for the heartbreaking, impossible choices my mother had to make alone, between her people and the man she loved, between her child and her very life!”

  Comonot bugged his eyes at me. “She chose wrongly on both counts.”

  He was making me angry. Unfortunately, I had come here for a specific purpose I had not yet achieved. “General, about the cabal—”

  “Your obsession?” He replaced his arm in his sleeve and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Yes, while we’re contemplating counterfactuals, let us consider this. If you learned of some cabal from a maternal memory, then the information is nearly twenty years old. How do you know they haven’t been caught and disbanded?”

  I folded my hands tightly, trying to contain my irritation. “You could tell me easily enough.”

  He tugged an earring. “How do you know they didn’t disband themselves when Imlann was banished?”

  “Imlann still appears to be pursuing their purpose, as if he believes they still exist,” I said. “They had the knights banished; he’s checking up on whether the dracomachia is sufficiently dead. If it is, they find a way to gain power. Having you assassinated would do, or perhaps they’re leading a coup in the Tanamoot right now.”

  Comonot waved me off; the rings on his thick fingers glinted. “I’d have heard word of a coup. Imlann could be working alone; he is delusional enough to believe others are with him. And if a cabal wished me dead, could they not kill me more easily while I was in the Tanamoot?”

  “That would only gain them a civil war; they want Goredd dragged into it,” I said.

  “This is far too speculative,” he said. “Even if a few disgruntled generals were plotting against me, my loyal generals—to say nothing of the younger generation, who have benefited most directly from the peace—would quickly subdue any uprising.”

  “There was just an attempt on your life!” I cried.

  “Which we foiled. It’s over.” He removed one of his rings and replaced it absently, thinking. “Prince Lucian said the man was one of the Sons of St. Ogdo. I cannot imagine the Sons collaborating with a dragon cabal, can you? What kind of dragon would think it a viable option to make use of them?”

  A fiendishly clever dragon, I suddenly realized. If the Sons started assassinating people, the Queen would be forced to crack down on them. Imlann would have his dirty work done for him by anti-dragon zealots, and then have his anti-dragon zealot problem quashed by the Crown—all while he watched and waited like the reptile he was.

  “Ardmagar,” I said, rising. “I must bid you good evening.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “I haven’t convinced you you’re wrong, and you’re too stubborn to give this up. What do you intend?”

  “To talk to someone who will listen,” I said, “and who, when faced with something previously thought to be counterfactual, adapts his philosophies to reality and not the other way around.”

  I walked out. He made no attempt to stop me.

  Kiggs waited in the corridor, leaning against the opposite wall, a little book in his hand. He snapped it shut at the sight of me and tucked it away in his scarlet doublet.

  “Am I that predictable?” I said.

  “Only when you do exactly what I would have done.”

  “Thank you for telling the guards to let me pass. It saved a lot of embarrassment on both sides.”

  He bowed, a more exaggerated courtesy than I deserved. “Selda thinks I ought to ask you, one more time, what the pair of you could possibly have to discuss. I promised I would, though I expect—”

  “I was just coming to find you both. There are things I should have told you that I … I haven’t,” I said. “I’m sorry for it. But let’s find your cousin first; she needs to hear this too.”

  He looked as if he weren’t certain whether to trust my sudden willingness to talk. I’d earned this skepticism; even now, I had no intention of telling the truth about myself. I sighed, but tried to smile at him. He escorted me toward the Blue Salon.

  Glisselda spotted us at once across the sparkly crush of courtiers; she smiled, but something in our expressions rapidly changed hers to quizzical. “Excuse us,” she said to the bevy of gentlemen surrounding
her. “Important affairs of state, you know.”

  She rose imperiously and led us into a little side room furnished with a lone Porphyrian couch; she closed the door and gestured for us to be seated. “What’s the latest from the city?” she asked.

  “Curfew. Lockdown,” said Kiggs, seating himself gingerly, as if he had an old man’s aches and pains. “I’m not looking forward to tomorrow if news spreads that Comonot killed a citizen in the cathedral—never mind that it was self-defense.”

  “You can’t suppress that information?” I asked, lingering near the door, not wanting to sit beside him, not knowing what to do with myself if I didn’t sit down.

  “We’re trying,” he snapped, “but the citizenry found out about Imlann and the petit ard awfully fast. The palace is full of leaks, apparently.”

  I had an idea who one leak might be. I said, “I have a lot to tell you both.”

  Glisselda grabbed my arm and wedged me onto the couch between her and Kiggs, smiling as if we were the happiest, coziest grouping ever conceived. “Speak, Phina.”

  I took a deep breath. “Before Comonot was attacked, I saw the Earl of Apsig at the cathedral speaking with a hooded priest who I believe was Thomas Broadwick,” I began.

  “You believe,” said Kiggs, shifting in his seat, his very posture skeptical. “Meaning you’re not completely certain. I don’t suppose you heard what was said?”

  “I also saw Josef in town earlier, reciting St. Ogdo’s Malediction with a group of the Sons,” I continued stubbornly.

  “If he’s joined the Sons, that’s serious,” said Kiggs, “but here’s the hole in your reasoning: either he’s a Son of St. Ogdo or he’s a dragon. You can’t have it both ways.”

  Thanks to my conversation with Comonot, I was ready for this argument. I explained how fiendishly clever it was to get the Sons involved, adding, “Orma said Imlann would be where we least expect. Where less than with the Sons?”

  “I still don’t see how it would be possible for a dragon to live here at court—for more than two years—and not be sniffed out by other dragons,” said Kiggs.

  “Obviously he pretends to despise them so that he can quit the room whenever they enter,” said Glisselda.

  “He could mask his scent with perfume easily enough,” I said, feeling miserable. Here I was, monstrous and wedged in between the pair of them, and they had no idea. I squeezed my hands between my knees to keep myself from fingering my wrist. “But listen,” I said. “There’s more.”

  I explained what I suspected about Imlann and the cabal, simply omitting my maternal memory: that Imlann was here to determine how dysfunctional the dracomachia had become, and that the cabal surely had an interest in seeing Comonot dead. “Maybe it’s over, maybe that one attempt was their best, but I don’t think we can chance it. I think they’ll try again.”

  “ ‘They’ being whom?” asked Kiggs. “This cabal you’ve suddenly pulled out of thin air? The Sons? Imlann, in a mysterious new plurality?”

  “Lucian, stop being a pedant,” said Glisselda, putting an arm around me.

  I continued. “Much of this is extrapolation, but it would be unwise to ignore the possibility—”

  “Extrapolation from what?” said Kiggs. Glisselda reached around behind me and smacked the side of his head. “What? It’s an important question! What’s the source of this information, and how reliable is it?”

  The princess lifted her chin defiantly. “Phina is the source, and Phina is reliable.”

  He didn’t argue, although he squirmed, clearly wanting to.

  “I would tell you if I could,” I said. “But I have obligations of my own, and—”

  “My first obligation is the truth,” he said bitterly. “Always.”

  Glisselda straightened, shifting a little away from me, and I realized the mention of my “obligations” had brought my own loyalties into question beyond the point where she could still defend me. She spoke evenly: “Whether this cabal really exists or not, the fact is that someone tried to kill the Ardmagar and failed. There isn’t much time left for another attempt.”

  Kiggs exhaled noisily through his lips in frustration and ran a hand down his face. “You’re right, Selda. We can’t afford to do nothing. Better too cautious than not cautious enough.”

  We set aside our quibbles and put our heads together, formulating a plan, circumventing the Queen and Comonot, taking all the weight of the peace upon ourselves. We just had to keep the Ardmagar safe for one more night, to make it through Treaty Eve without anyone dying, and then Comonot would return home. If this cabal really existed and killed him in the Tanamoot, well, that would be out of our hands.

  Kiggs would tighten palace security, although it was already nearly as strong as he could make it, unless we intended foreign dignitaries to dance with members of the Guard at the ball. He would also inform Ambassador Fulda that he believed real danger to Comonot lurked here at home, and would request that Eskar and the petit ard be recalled so they could help. They’d been many miles away at last report; it was unclear whether they would make it back in time. Glisselda was to stick to the Ardmagar as best she could; she complained that she’d have no chance to practice the Tertius before the concert, but I could tell by the gleam in her eye that intrigue interested her more than music.

  I had duties, of course, assisting Viridius and preparing the entertainments. That would be my focus until the ball itself, when I’d take turns babysitting the Ardmagar.

  Privately, I set a few additional tasks for myself. I wanted all three of my fellow half-breeds present. We were going to need all the help we could get.

  I looked for Abdo in the garden of grotesques as soon as I returned to my rooms. He was hanging upside down in his fig tree, but he leaped down at my approach and offered me gola nuts.

  “I glimpsed your troupe today from afar,” I said, seating myself cross-legged on the ground beside him. “I wished I could have introduced myself because I feel awkward asking for your help when I haven’t even met you.”

  “Do not say so, madamina! Of course I will help if I can.”

  I told him what was afoot. “Bring your whole troupe. I will make space for you on the performance docket. Dress … er …”

  “We know what is appropriate for the Goreddi court.”

  “Of course you do. Forgive me. There will be others of our kind there, other … what was the Porphyrian word you used?”

  “Ityasaari?”

  “Yes. Do you know Loud Lad and Miss Fusspots, from the garden?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I see everything you permit me to see.”

  I suppressed a shudder, wondering whether he could taste my emotions in the wind as Jannoula had. “I will want you all to help each other and work together, just as you help me.”

  “Yours are the orders, madamina. Yours the right. I will be there and ready.”

  I smiled at him and rose to go, dusting off my skirts. “Is madamina Porphyrian for ‘maidy,’ like grausleine in Samsamese?”

  His eyes widened. “No, indeed! It means ‘general.’ ”

  “Wh-why would you call me that?”

  “Why did you call me Fruit Bat? I had to call you something, and every day you come here as if reviewing your legions.” He smiled sheepishly and added: “Once, long ago, you told someone here—that girl with beautiful green eyes, the one you sent away. You said your name aloud, but I misheard it.”

  All around us, an astonished wind blew.

  I did not know where Lars slept at night, but there had been enough broad hints from various quarters that I feared I might end up seeing more of Viridius than I cared to.

  I waited until morning, made myself a fortifying cup of tea, and went straight to the garden. I took Loud Lad’s hands, whirling out into a vision. To my astonishment, the whole world seemed spread below me: the city, glowing pink in the light of dawn; the shining ribbon of river; the distant rolling farmland. Lars stood upon the crenellations of the barbican, each foot on a
separate merlon, playing his pipes for the dawn and for the city at his feet. My ethereal presence didn’t stop him; I let him finish, secretly relishing the feeling that I was flying above the city, buoyed by his music. It was exhilarating to be so high up and not fear falling.

  “Is thet you, Seraphina?” he said at last.

  It is. I need your help.

  I told him I feared for the Ardmagar, that I might need him at a moment’s notice, that others of our kind—Abdo and Dame Okra—would be there to help, and how to recognize them. If he was astonished to hear there were other half-dragons, Lars’s Samsamese stoicism didn’t let it show. He said, “But how will this danger come, Seraphina? An attack on the castle? A traitor within the walls?”

  I did not know how to tell him whom we suspected. I began cautiously: I know you don’t like discussing Josef, but—

  He cut me off. “No. I hev nothink to say about him.”

  He may be involved. He may be the one behind everything.

  His face fell, but his resolve did not. “If so, I will standt with you against him. But I am sworn not to speak of what he is.” He fingered the chanter of his war pipes absently. “Perheps,” he said at last, “I come armedt.”

  I don’t think Kiggs will allow anyone but the palace guard to arrive armed.

  “Always I hev my fists and my war pipes!”

  Er … yes. That’s the spirit, Lars.

  It would be a memorable evening, if nothing else.

  I knew better than to contact Dame Okra with my mind. I didn’t need my nose all black and blue for Treaty Eve.

  I worked fast and crabby all morning, directing the hanging of garlands, the placing of chandeliers and sideboards, the moving of the harpsichord—which looked like a coffin as four men carried it through the door without its legs—and countless other lastminute details. All the while I conscientiously attempted to get Dame Okra’s attention without contacting her. My attempts to will her into appearing, to project fake need—my sighing and fretting and muttering, “I sure could use Dame Okra’s help!”—met with universal failure.