Shadow Scale (36 page)

I knew her. In my garden, I called her Miserere. In visions, I’d seen her nab pickpockets in the Grand Emporio and stop temple thieves, putting those swords to swift and skillful use. She was an officer of the law; her black-clad brethren patrolled the Zokalaa. What was she doing here? Had she followed me? It occurred to me that Pende might have asked her to. I hoped that wasn’t the case; perhaps she was merely curious.

“Hello!” I called, and then more properly in Porphyrian, “I greet you as the ocean greets the morning sun.”

Her eyes glittered with amusement, or possibly malice. Her mouth, a thin line, was hard to read. She spread her wings and launched herself into the sky.

She was so elegant in flight that she took my breath with her.

I reached Metasaari an hour later. A buttress jutted out of the mountain, separating the two halves of the city at the top, so I’d had to return to the harbor, go east, and then climb back uphill. The eastern heights, like the western, grew wealthier the higher one went. There were fewer apartment blocks here and more single dwellings, some with colorful marble facades or fluted columns. Trees lined the streets, dark cedars and pollarded sycamores with whitewashed trunks. I reached a large park with a public fountain where women were gossiping, water jugs on their hips. Fruit and nut vendors stalked the perimeter with carts; servants scurried past, feet slapping the flagstone street.

This park, according to the librarians’ map, was the heart of Metasaari. It was a far cry from Quighole, our dismal saar ghetto back home.

But where were the dragons? I saw no one with my sallow complexion. The people here, conversing in the shade of the stunted sycamores, pushing handcarts up the hill, were all brown-skinned Porphyrians.

I stopped at a corner caupona, where food bubbled in great pots built right into the counter. They had eggplant stew and octopus balls in gravy—tastier than it sounds—but I wasn’t there to eat. I lined up behind a thin and apparently hungry man who ordered a lot of everything; he finally shuffled off to an outdoor table, balancing a heaped bowl in each hand, and I stepped up to the counter.

“Excuse,” I said to the shriveled proprietress. “Does your mouth speak Goreddi?”

She waved her ladle impatiently and said in Porphyrian, “What’re you having?”

“One glass tea,” I managed, fumbling for a coin in my little purse. “No Goreddi? It is fair. I try more. Do you see saarantrai in circle of this park?”

She shook her head and muttered, “Foreign fool,” as she handed me my change. I turned, mortified, toward the patio tables. “You forgot your tea!” the woman called after me. I retrieved it; the cup rattled against the saucer.

“Excuse me,” said a low, pleasant voice, the thin man who’d stood ahead of me in line. He was sitting at a patio table, waving a large hand in case I didn’t see him. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he said in Goreddi, “but I speak your language. Can I help?”

I hesitated, then set my tea on his table and pulled up a chair. He hailed the caupona owner, who grumblingly brought him spiced wine. “She’s rude to everyone,” he stage-whispered. “It’s part of her charm.”

Small spectacles perched upon his long, straight nose, and he had pulled his long, straight hair into a Ninysh-style ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore a short Goreddi houppelande over Porphyrian trousers. Clearly he was a man who traveled.

“Have you been to Goredd?” I asked, swallowing my rising homesickness.

“I lived there for years,” said the man warmly. He held out a hand. “I’m Lalo.”

“Seraphina,” I said, shaking his hand, another curious memento of home.

“I heard you’re looking for dragons?” he said, digging into his bowl of octopus.

I took a sip of scalding tea. It was unexpectedly minty. “I am. There’s supposed to be a community of exiles here.”

“That’s right,” said Lalo. “Metasaari. This is it.”

I looked at the other caupona patrons, the women beside the fountain, the fruit vendors and pedestrians, and saw only Porphyrians. “Where are the saarantrai?”

He laughed. The sun glinted on his teeth. “All around you, hatchling. I am one.”

I almost choked on my tea. I stared at Lalo’s face, his easy grin, his dark skin. Saints in Heaven. He was like no dragon I’d ever met.

He leaned forward, elbows on the table. “I know what you’re thinking. You’ve only ever seen saarantrai the color of cave fish, but brown is our default shade. Look.” He splayed his large hand on the tiled tabletop. Before my very eyes, the skin of his hand lightened until it was almost as pale as my own, and then it darkened again.

I was too astonished to speak.

“Silver blood,” he explained. “If we bring it to the surface, we pale. This sort of camouflage is useful in our natural habitat, where the biggest danger is other dragons, or in the Southlands, where we don’t dare stand out too much.”

Embarrassingly, I had noted the skin color of the people in this neighborhood and then considered the matter no further.
Looking out at Metasaari now, I saw what my assumptions had blinded me to: a subtle angularity, more muted colors of clothing, no ornaments, and short, practical hairstyles. The fruit vendors didn’t shout or sing about their wares; the fountain’s gurgling was louder than the women’s gossiping. If these were saarantrai, they were more subdued than their Porphyrian counterparts.

Still, Lalo grinned. These were not quite saarantrai as I’d known them in Goredd, either.

Orma would likely be dark-skinned here. Could I have walked past without seeing him? I had asked the librarians whether they’d seen a foreigner, presumably pale like me.

“Are you looking for someone specific?” said Lalo, starting in on his eggplant.

I took another sip of tea. “His name is Orma.”

“Son of Imlann and Eri? Brother of Linn?”

My heart leaped. “Yes! You’ve seen him?”

Lalo shook his head. “Not for years. I was at university with his sister.”

Orma had surely been cautious, even of other dragons; that was no surprise. I tried a different angle. “He’s with another dragon, called Eskar.”

“Eskar, yes. She’s been here for several months,” he said, wagging his spoon at me. He added in a quieter voice, “She’s trying to get us home to the Tanamoot. Not everyone thinks it wise. For my part, I’m no fighter, but I’ll do what it takes to get back. I’ve found nothing but heartbreak here.”

“Why were you exiled?” I said, instinctively matching his quietness.

Lalo sighed, disconcertingly melancholy, and scraped up the last of his octopus gravy with his spoon. “I wasn’t. I fell in love with a Goreddi woman and went home for excision like a good little saar.” He took a gulp of wine and gazed up at the cloudless sky. “In a fit of romantic stupidity, however, I made myself a mind-pearl before I went.”

I knew a bit about mind-pearls, a way dragons had of encapsulating memories and hiding them; my mother had left some in my mind, which I’d never suspected until the sight of Orma in his natural shape had triggered them to open. The trigger could be anything.

I twisted the pearl ring on my pinkie, suddenly wondering what Orma had meant by
The thing itself plus nothing equals everything
. Had he made himself a mind-pearl? Was that what he was trying to tell me?

Lalo’s gaze had grown distant. “I wanted to keep those days alive inside me even if I couldn’t remember them. I purposefully forgot how to trigger my mind-pearl, because I never intended to do it. Alas, I tripped over that forgotten trigger, remembered all, found her again, and … she’d moved on. She’s married, and here I am, stuck with my sorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, finding this turn of conversation intense and awkward. I couldn’t imagine such an admission from Orma or Eskar. “Um. Do you know where I can find Eskar?”

He stuffed his mouth with eggplant and rice and didn’t look at me. “Eskar’s gone. Two weeks now, not a word to anyone.”

That was a surprise. Comonot’s entire Porphyrian gambit was her idea; surely she wouldn’t have left, not with Comonot due to
arrive in less than two weeks. If she wasn’t here, where would she have gone? “Was there another dragon with her?” I pressed.

Lalo shrugged irritably. “I don’t know.”

I wasn’t put off by his brusqueness; that’s what I was used to from dragons. He was clearly done talking to me. I rose to go, scraping the chair back. “Thank you for your time.” He nodded, brushing crumbs off his table for the birds.

I walked back toward Naia’s. The more I thought about it—Orma’s cryptic riddle, his caginess in the letter—the more convinced I was that he’d made a mind-pearl, and that he’d wanted me to know. Had it been a precaution, or had he feared that the Censors were close on his trail?

Might he have left town with Eskar—or more accurately, might Eskar have left town with him? I could believe that she’d leave Porphyry, even with the Ardmagar’s arrival imminent, to protect Orma.

I wished Orma’s ring had been a thnik after all; I could have contacted him and put my mind at ease. Instead, I fretted all the way to the lower city, the afternoon sun beating on the crown of my head.

I had hopes, at the end of this day of dead ends, that at least Abdo’s struggle might have come to its conclusion. Alas, the moment I stepped into Naia’s building, I could tell something had gone terribly wrong. A few of Abdo’s cousins still sat on the stairs, no longer laughing. Only the older women remained in Naia’s
apartment, lighting candles in a circle on the floor. I paused in the doorway, wondering whether I had come back too early, but Naia jumped up as soon as she spotted me. Without a word, she took my elbow, led me to Abdo’s alcove, and drew back the curtain. Abdo lay on his mat, twitching fitfully, his eyes open but unseeing. An old woman dabbed his forehead with a wet sea sponge.

“We took him to Paulos Pende,” Naia whispered. “Have no doubt. You were right. The old priest put aside his ire—how could he not, seeing Abdo like this?”

“Abdo was like this?” I asked, horrified.

“Worse. He fought us; he bit Uncle Fasias. He would have been screaming, if he could scream.” She paused, and I saw that she was holding back tears. Her nostrils flattened as she inhaled; her lips trembled. “Pende could do nothing for him, not when Jannoula has got him and he’s fighting her so hard. We need to wait until he prevails and she is dormant, or until he loses the fight and she is at rest.”

I knelt by Abdo’s aged auntie, held out my hand, and said, “May I take a turn?” She wordlessly handed me the sponge, but she didn’t leave. We sat together and shared our sorrow.

There followed a fortnight of frustration.

I took Ingar’s things to Camba’s the very next day, but the doorman said Camba was attending a performance of Necans’s
Bitter Nothing
with her Tragedy Fanciers’ Club. I said I’d come back another day.

Abdo’s extended family cared for him in shifts. Naia was one of eight siblings, so every day it seemed I was meeting new aunts, uncles, and cousins. They came bearing hot food and took turns feeding him. The cousins brought amusements—dice, jacks, a snaking board game called sysix—but Abdo was in no condition to play. He tossed and turned as if with fever, or slept fitfully; sometimes he woke with Jannoula in his eyes, but she never had enough control to speak to me through him.