Shadow Scale (38 page)

“Pende is our spiritual father,” said Phloxia, smiling ruefully, “and each of us his disappointing child.”

“He’s happy with Camba,” offered Brasidas, talking around a mouthful of figs.

“Yes, well, Camba came back to him, and Pende trained her to see the soul-light,” said Phloxia. She leaned over her plate of millet cakes and whispered exaggeratedly, “The rest of us were failures. We saw no light. I’m not sure we all can.”

“I can see Gelina’s,” said Gaios, his eyes wide and earnest.

“And I yours, brother,” said Gelina, resting her shapely head on his shoulder.

“The twins are a walking solipsism: self-referential,” said Phloxia, gazing at them fondly. She was like a sweeter Dame Okra. “Anyway, they broke the old man’s heart in turn by leaving Chakhon for Lakhis.”

“It was necessary,” said Gelina, her brows buckling anxiously. Gaios nodded.

Winged Mina stuffed olives into her mouth at an alarming rate, never spitting out any pits. When she spoke, her voice was raspy and raw: “The god doesn’t call us all. Pende understands why we leave.”

“I told Pende I had to leave, by Chakhon’s own logic,” said Phloxia. “If I’m to serve the god of chance, my presence in the temple should also be a matter of chance.”

Ingar chuckled at this, shaking his bald head; he seemed at home here. “Phloxia,” said Camba, who was sitting beside him, “you twist logic to your own purposes.”

“It’s a lawyer’s duty,” sniffed Phloxia, bunching her wobbly mouth into a pout.

Camba’s eyes twinkled fondly. “Didn’t I hear you had a brooch for me?”

“That’s hearsay!” cried Phloxia. “I can neither confirm nor deny …”

I rose and drifted over to the food table before the servants carried the last of the millet cakes away. Behind me the others laughed. They had so much history together and knew each other
so well. I felt a bit overcome. This was what I had wanted to create in Goredd. Exactly this.

These ityasaari might be willing to bend Pende’s rules enough to meet me here, but I doubted they would go so far as to travel to Goredd against his wishes—and why should they? To defend someone else’s country? To re-create what they already had here?

I couldn’t ask them to come to Goredd, not with Jannoula waiting to pounce on them as soon as they ventured south, not when the one who could free them of her was certain to stay behind.

“You look melancholy,” said Ingar at my elbow, startling me. “I suspect I know why. I dreamed of this garden, too. So did Jannoula, but it can be accomplished without her.”

This was a new Ingar. The intensity and focus of his gaze astonished me.

“You look well,” I said.

He nodded gravely and pushed up his square spectacles. “Thank Camba. She believed in me when there wasn’t much me to be found.” Ingar’s thick lips twitched; he took a deep breath. “But you know what else has helped? I’ll show you.”

Ingar led me toward the house, under a shady portico. Two iron-framed chairs stood like sentinels beside a pile of books. Ingar picked a slim volume off the top of the heap. I recognized it immediately.

“I deciphered this,” said Ingar, gesturing me to a seat. “It’s Goreddi transliterated into the Porphyrian alphabet and written in mirror-hand, with gaps inserted at intervals to make it look like a cipher. Not so difficult, honestly, and I’m not the first to have
read it. Look here.” He flipped to the last page, where someone had written in Goreddi:

Lower down the page, Father Reynard had added one more faint line:
St. Yirtrudis, if you are a Saint—if anyone is—forgive me for what I must do
.

“Is this book about Yirtrudis? She’s a strange Saint to address otherwise,” I said, an unexpected hope rising in my chest. I’d always felt a visceral kinship with the hidden patroness of my hidden heritage.

Suddenly the possibility that Orma’s thesis might be true nearly overwhelmed me. My patroness, at least, might be truly, properly mine.

Ingar waggled his eyebrows. “It’s the only known copy of St. Yirtrudis’s testament. Perhaps even the original. How’s your ecclesiastical history?”

“Utterly worthless,” I said.

Ingar was relishing this. “Just two generations ago, this Father Reynard became Bishop Reynard of Blystane. From that seat of power, backed by my people, the aggressively devout Samsamese, he denounced St. Yirtrudis as a heretic.”

“Because of something in this testament?” I asked, clamping my hands between my knees to still them.

“Because of everything in it!” cried Ingar. “Yirtrudis throws everything we think we know about the Saints into confusion.”

I lowered my voice, as if the Porphyrians were going to care. “Does it say the Saints were half-dragons?”

Ingar leaned back to observe me with more distance. “That’s one of many remarkable claims. But how did you guess?”

I explained about Orma’s theories. “I found the book with his notes. He claimed to have read it, but he didn’t leave his translation at the library.”

“I’ll write one out for you,” said Ingar, nodding firmly. “I can read the text easily, of course, having cracked the cipher. You should hear the story in her own words. Everything is clear to me now.”

I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but something over my shoulder had caught his eye. I followed his gaze and saw Camba approaching, her sandals clacking on the flagstones.

“We’ve heard about Abdo,” Camba said solemnly. “I’m sorry he’s suffering. It’s cold consolation, but Jannoula’s struggle with Abdo may be preventing her from bringing other evils to fruition. Here.” She handed me a bundle wrapped in a napkin. “Some cakes for Abdo and his family. Please take them our love and prayers.” This was clearly my cue to go. I rose and glanced down at Ingar.

His eyes shone like hopeful stars as he looked at Camba. In that instant one thing became clear to me: Ingar wasn’t coming to Goredd, either. I couldn’t blame him, but my melancholy returned and followed me back to Naia’s.

That night I entered my garden of grotesques with a new sense of purpose. I was not there merely to soothe the grotesques—or myself—but to change something that had been niggling at me. I’d been finding myself more and more embarrassed by the silly names I’d given these people I was connected to. Master Smasher was the wrong gender, even in Goreddi; Newt (for his stunted limbs) and Gargoyella (for her enormous mouth) were outright insulting.

It was bad enough that I had affixed everyone’s mind-fire to myself without asking. The least I could do was call them by their right names.

I walked the winding paths, through meadows, over streams, among lush foliage, touching each upon the head and renaming them: Brasidas, Phloxia, Mina, Gaios, Gelina, Ingar, Camba, Blanche, Nedouard, Od Fredricka, Dame Okra, Lars, Abdo.

I’d expected to feel everyone’s presence more keenly if I named them; maybe it wasn’t just shame that drove me, but some hope of renewal (the Milestones were now but twenty-three paces apart). If my garden could never exist in the real world as I had imagined it, so be it, but I would shore it up here. I felt Pende’s and Gianni’s absence constantly, as if I’d lost two teeth and couldn’t stop prodding my gums with my tongue.

Only when I reached Pandowdy, the single ityasaari I had not yet met in the real world, did I begin to realize my mistake. He rose out of the swamp, an enormous scaly slug, caked with grime, as big as ever. He loomed over me and touched the sky.

Literally.

His nose—or whatever you call the pointy tip of a featureless worm—jabbed the limpid blue as if it were the ceiling of a canvas tent. I gaped, disbelieving, whirled to face the rest of the garden, and bumped my head on another dollop of drooping sky.

I fell to my knees in a patch of moss—or not moss, but a tiny rose garden, with a tiny sundial in the center, and a tiny Dame Okra beside it, the size of a skittle-pin. I picked her up and stared at her. Beside the minuscule rose garden ran a narrow ditch, once an imposing ravine; jammed in this cranny was a skittle-pin Lars.

The sky, sagging further, touched the back of my neck. It was clammy.

The shrunken denizens of my garden were all within arm’s reach, as were the border fences, the egression gate, and the peeling, full-sized door of Jannoula’s cottage. That hadn’t shrunk; it was the only thing holding up the sky.

I gathered my people like twigs and laid them side by side on the lawn. How had this happened? Had I done this by naming them? I had only intended good, had only meant to … to acknowledge who they really were.

Was I finally seeing my own handiwork clearly? Abdo had called my garden a narrow gatehouse. I had imagined these human forms; maybe naming them had dispelled that illusion. All that was left was the mind-fire I had stolen. If I squinted, the row of doll-like avatars glowed faintly. I could finally see mind-fire; that was no comfort at all.

My formerly wide-open spaces were making me claustrophobic. I beat back the damp sky-fabric and crawled toward the
egression gate. “This is my garden, all in ard,” I said, the words catching in my throat. “I tend it faithfully. Let it keep faith with me.”

I opened my eyes to the darkness of Naia’s apartment. I lay still for some moments, breathing hard and listening to echoing footsteps in the street below, to the bump and creak of ships upon the ceaseless sea. My heartbeat slowed, but my racing thoughts did not.

My thnik linked me to Glisselda; another connected her with Kiggs. During that fruitless fortnight, she kept me apprised of when his ship would arrive. I haunted the docks the morning it was due, getting underfoot of fishermen and stevedores. I had just bought myself lunch and was wholly occupied with keeping it away from the bold and saucy seagulls when I heard someone cry, “Garegia!” which is Porphyrian for Goredd.

A sloop had entered the harbor and was drifting slowly west in search of its berth. It flew a purple and green flag, adorned with a prancing rabbit, the emblem of the Royal House of Goredd.

I tossed my eggplant fritters to the gulls and was running toward the western docks in two heartbeats.

I followed the ship, dodging haggling merchants, crab pots, and heaped fishing nets, skirting cargo piles and gaggles of bearded sailors, trying to keep the mast and flag in sight. I reached
the right berth, out of breath, just as the mariners lowered the gangway. I scanned the faces on deck and spotted the familiar hawkish nose and jowly chin of Ardmagar Comonot, deposed leader of all dragonkind.

He spotted me from the prow and cried out a greeting. He’d already relaxed into a darker complexion; his hair had been powerfully slicked down but was curling back up at the fringes. Comonot waved vigorously, with no thought for the safety of those around him. “Seraphina!” he called, elbowing seamen aside in his haste to maneuver down the gangway. He wore a long blue robe, pleated and embroidered in the style of a Porphyrian gentleman. As he drew nearer, I saw something new: a pale scar along his jawline.

Comonot kissed me effusively on both cheeks in the Porphyrian style, bizarrely grabbing my ears as he did so. I struggled not to laugh; he tried harder than most dragons, but there was always some nuance of human behavior that eluded him.

He stepped back, looked me over, and said in more typical draconic fashion, “Your nose is burned, but you look like you’ve been eating well.”

I smiled, but I was craning my neck, looking for Kiggs in the crowd. I saw Goreddi sailors and the Ardmagar’s retinue of saar secretaries and human bodyguards. “Where’s Prince Lucian?” I asked, a nervous knot in my stomach.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Comonot, tapping a thick finger upon his lips. He turned to a sailor standing patiently behind him. “Did the prince disembark, or did we throw him overboard during that awful storm?”

I looked at the sailor and saw a stranger, his face framed by a thin travel beard, his hair a bit too long, his smile a bit too … No, I knew that smile. My heart knew it, even if my eyes were too stupid to understand what was right in front of them.