Shadow Scale (35 page)

Once again the garden seemed to have shrunk. The trees in Fruit Bat’s grove were shorter; I could pick oranges that used to hang out of reach. Did the garden contract when I neglected it, or was it simply more apparent after a longer absence? I wanted a way to measure the change. I imagined two large standing stones, one on either side of Miss Fusspot’s rose garden. I named them the Milestones, even though they weren’t a mile apart, and I paced between them three times to be sure my count was accurate. They were forty-nine paces apart. I would remember that, and measure each time I was here.

I returned to myself and stretched, achy from sleeping on the floor. Abdo had released my hand, so I got up, closed his curtain,
and tiptoed across the apartment to the narrow bed Naia had meant me to sleep in. I lay awake some hours longer, fretting over my garden’s diminution. As hard as I tried, I could not figure out what it meant.

I was awakened again, after the sun was well up, by the sound of many voices speaking Porphyrian too rapidly for me to understand. I emerged from the guest room, blinking blearily, and found myself unexpectedly faced with a couple of dozen people packed into Naia’s main room. They wore the bright tunics and trousers of the lower city, many with fish-gutting knives at their belts or their hair tied back with colorful fabric. A pile of children bounced and giggled on the couch; a pair of women unwrapped hot dishes of barley, eggplant, and fish, turning Naia’s writing desk into a buffet table.

A hush fell the moment I appeared, two dozen pairs of dark, inquisitive eyes staring unabashedly at me. Finally, a woman who shared Naia’s round cheeks and short stature spoke slowly enough for me to understand: “What is this foreigner doing here?”

Naia elbowed her way to my side and began introducing everyone—Aunt Mili, Uncle Marus, Cousin Mnesias—in such rapid succession that I felt certain she didn’t intend me to remember any of them. They each nodded tersely, looking lightly affronted by my gall at popping out of nowhere. Naia’s father, Tython, smiled at me, but we were off to the next cousin before I could even smile back. We worked our way across the apartment and then out to the stairwell, where nieces and nephews sat on the steps, passing a bowl of dates.

When we reached the lower landing, Naia whispered, “I told
one of my sisters that I was worried about Abdo, so now the entire family descends on us. We’ll figure out how to help him, don’t worry.”

She didn’t say so, but from the way she was patting my shoulder, I deduced that the family would find my presence extraneous. I was being dismissed.

“I know how to help Abdo,” I said. “Another ityasaari has invaded his mind, and she’s hurting him. I’d hoped to take him to the temple this morning.”

And given how badly Paulos Pende had reacted when I’d mentioned Abdo, I thought it might be better for Abdo’s family to take him.

Naia frowned skeptically. “Abdo wouldn’t want to go to the temple.”

“Last night he agreed to go,” I said, hoping his resolution still held this morning. “He needs to go as soon as possible so Paulos Pende can remove this invasive ityasaari from Abdo’s mind before she takes over completely. She could make Abdo do anything, against his will. She could make him kill Paulos Pende, or himself.”

Naia glanced back over her shoulder; the sound of arguing filtered down from her apartment. “My family has a complicated history with Chakhon,” she said, “but I will convince them this is urgent, even if I have to carry Abdo to the temple myself.”

She retreated up the stairs, not looking back. Her nieces and nephews watched me, wide-eyed. I decided they needed to know their cousin was in trouble; surely the more people that knew, the better. “Abdo needs a temple of Chakhon like … like as if he
flames with fire,” I said in Porphyrian, hoping the sentiment, at least, made sense to them. The children nodded solemnly, their mouths puckered as if they were saving their laughter for later.

I heard it before I reached the bottom of the stairs.

I stepped out into the sunshine, thoroughly preoccupied. I needed something to do, or I’d spend the whole day fretting about Abdo. Luckily, I had an uncle and five more ityasaari to locate—without Paulos Pende’s help and, I suspected, against his wishes.

I was contemplating where to start when I realized my name was being called. I turned and saw a pimply-faced youth in a pointed red cap standing near the door of Naia’s building; I’d walked right past him when I came out. The lad flashed a grin and then spoke with exaggerated slowness, sticking his lips out like a horse’s. “Are you the foreigner who’s staying with Naia?” he asked. “Seraphina?”

“Yes, it is I, yes, Seraphina,” I managed. He gave a curious bow, like an awkward paraphrase of Southlander courtesy, and handed me a hinged metal box the size of a small book. I turned it in my hands, uncertain what to do with it. The messenger pointed out an ornate latch, which opened the thing. The two flat interior surfaces were covered in smooth wax, and carved into the wax were words in Goreddi:

The red-capped messenger grinned when I looked up. Was I supposed to pay him? It seemed he only wanted the box back. “Any reply?” he asked. I shook my head.

Ingar’s belongings were all upstairs, of course, but I did not care to face Abdo’s extended family again, not right after I’d been so unceremoniously ejected.

However, I knew where there was another book—a difficult, ciphered book—that might keep Ingar occupied for a while. I would fetch it from Orma’s stash at the Bibliagathon, deliver it to Camba, learn where the other ityasaari could be found (for surely Camba knew), and start searching in earnest.

I stopped in the Zokalaa on the way to the library, found an everything-on-a-stick vendor, and bought two skewers of eggplant for breakfast. The sky was clear, and the breeze carried whiffs of charcoal smoke, fish, and unfamiliar flowers. A nuncio announced news from a pedestal in the Zokalaa at intervals each
day; he was a portly gentleman whose booming voice made Josquin’s sound like a feeble squeak. I stood and listened to him while I ate my eggplant, and was pleased with how much I understood. It helped that he spoke slowly and clearly. I walked on, smiling at shopkeepers stacking fruit into tidy pyramids and children skipping up the steep streets as if the slope were no obstacle.

At the Bibliagathon, I went straight to the musicology room, intent on retrieving the slim manuscript that had been tucked into Orma’s notes. My ulterior motive, of course, was to check whether Orma had returned. He might even be here, hard at work. Alas, the little room was empty, and his notes were wedged into the volume of Thoric exactly as I’d replaced them. I glanced behind me as if he might walk around the corner, set his things on the table with apparent unconcern, look up slowly, and … not smile.

He did not appear. This was a silly way to look for him, like some shy suitor mooning about in front of the beloved’s house, hoping for a glimpse. Orma had come to Porphyry with Eskar, and Eskar had been dealing with the exiles. Did the exiles live in a particular neighborhood? That would be the place to start.

Still, I filched the leather-bound, handwritten testament Orma had secreted in the book, not merely to give Ingar something to do—although it would work brilliantly for that—but in hopes that Orma would miss it and would contact me at the address I’d written in his notes.

The librarians had frisked Ingar last night; I couldn’t walk out with this book under my arm. I shoved the ancient manuscript up under my tunic.

Of course, this unsubtle subterfuge made it awkward to talk
with librarians; I’d clearly done things in the wrong order. Keeping my arms folded across my even-flatter-than-usual chest, I approached a pair of librarians pushing a cart of scrolls up the corridor. They listened politely to my mangled questions, but neither remembered a tall, bushy-haired, bespectacled foreigner with a beaky nose and no manners.

“No manners by our standards, or by yours?” the younger librarian asked, sagely stroking his peach-fuzzed chin.

“By mine,” I said.

“So, climbing shelves and drinking ink,” said the other librarian, a stout woman with a charcoal pencil stuck into her curly hair. I was not quite convinced she knew it was there. “I’d remember such an unruly Southlander,” she said.

“Ha ha,” I said, trying to maintain a cheerful expression. “But where is it a neighborhood of saarantrai? Where part of the city?”

The younger man broke into a smile. “The exiles mostly live in Metasaari. That, we can help you find.”

The woman knew exactly where her pencil was; she extracted it expertly and drew directions to Metasaari on a scrap of paper, and then another map (at my request) to House Perdixis, which turned out to be quite close. I thanked the librarians in the most formal way possible. The young man got a funny look on his face, then said in flawless Goreddi: “Sometimes simpler is better. If you say a casual
charimatizi
in a sweet voice, maybe batting your eyes, no one will fault you.”

“Well then,
charimatizi
,” I said, blinking aggressively. It wasn’t quite the same as batting, but that was all he was going to get.

From the way the pair grinned at each other, I knew I’d
provided them with ridiculous-foreigner stories for a week. I hugged my chest and wandered off, knowing they weren’t the only ones who’d gotten a laugh.

I went to Camba’s first, since it was only three blocks north and two blocks east. The librarians had explained what I would see, or I would never have recognized the facade of the great house: the only part visible was an intricately carved wooden door between a wineshop and a pastry maker’s. Plain marble columns flanked the door, their pediments inlaid with geometric figures in contrasting colors. Wealth was evident if you looked, but House Perdixis did not put on an ostentatious display.

I extracted the purloined manuscript from under my tunic and examined the battered leather cover. This unassuming text contained proof, according to Orma’s notes, that the Saints had been half-dragons. That thought perturbed me. When it was merely Orma’s crackpot fancy, I could laugh at the notion—indeed, I felt urgently that I needed to laugh. It was deeply unsettling to think that the Saints might have been something as prosaic as me.

What did it mean for all of us—human and ityasaari alike—if it was true? Why didn’t any of our scriptures mention it? Had the Saints’ few, negative allusions to interbreeding been a deliberate obfuscation of the truth, similar to the way I had always hidden?

There was no point tying myself in knots until I knew for sure what this testament said. I would want to read Ingar’s translation when it was finished.

House Perdixis had a bronze knocker shaped like a hand, poised to beat insistently upon the door. An aged doorman answered almost at once but would not let me in. Camba wasn’t home; she’d taken Ingar to some Mathematical Society meeting, as best I could discern. I left the manuscript for Ingar and retreated, disappointed. I would bring the rest of Ingar’s belongings tomorrow, and ask Camba about the other ityasaari then.

As I turned to leave, I heard a scrabbling above me, claws against tile. I looked up and saw a woman in black squatting on the roof of the wineshop, watching me. She was tiny, barely Abdo’s size, and in place of arms she had wings with clawed hands at the ends. Long silver scales plumed her wings like feathers. Her graying hair was braided tightly to her scalp in zigzagging lines; she had two swords strapped across her back.