Shadow Scale (23 page)

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 unexpectedly. “
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 caught 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—”