Shadow Scale (58 page)

“They opened me up,” she said, her eyes locked on me, as she refastened her gown. “They filled my blood with poisons, taught me physics and languages, ran me through mazes, determined how long I can last without food or warmth. I died twice; they brought me back to life with lightning.

“When my mother birthed me, I wept. When I was reborn, I raged. My third awakening made me realize I was meant to be in this world. I could not leave until I had discovered my purpose and fulfilled it.”

She turned with a graceful whirl of skirts, like a dancer, clasped her hands to her heart, and continued: “One day, one of my kind—our own St. Seraphina—found me and gave me hope. I learned I had a people.”

I glanced out at the ityasaari: Dame Okra, Phloxia, Lars, Ingar, Od Fredricka, Brasidas, the twins. They smiled; I couldn’t bear to look.

“From that day forth,” Jannoula was saying, “all my energies focused on escape. If that meant convincing my uncle to trust me by devising strategies for the Old Ard, then that’s what I did. I won them victories, yes, but each came at terrible cost. I saw to that.”

I had noted this before. I hoped Kiggs was paying attention.

“My only purpose, my single-minded goal,” said Jannoula, her voice high and clear, “was to come to Goredd, the home of my dearest sister. I would have moved Heaven to do it.”

There wasn’t a dry eye among the councilors, old and young
alike. The Queen dabbed subtly at her own with a lace-edged handkerchief; the ityasaari wept openly. Jannoula stepped toward me, took my hand in her cold fingers, and raised it triumphantly, as if we were dear friends reunited at last; only I could feel how hard she clenched my hand.

“O brethren!” she cried. “Let this be a day of rejoicing.”

And with that, still clamping my hand like a crab, she strode up the carpet toward the far end of the chamber, dragging me with her. Behind us the council broke out in heartfelt applause. Jannoula waved without turning around and said nothing more until we were out in the corridor, walking swiftly through the palace.

She flung my hand away. “What was that?” she said through her teeth. “An attempt to discredit me? A little something you thought everyone should know?”

“I really do want to help you,” I said. I meant it, though probably not the way she hoped. “I saw your old cell at Lab Four, your fur suit on the peg behind the door. I know what they did to you.” The thought of the place made my throat tighten. “The dragons told me you were still theirs, though.”

She stopped short. “I am not theirs. I have never been theirs,” she snarled. “The unbearable arrogance of dragons! They will learn soon enough.”

“Will they, indeed?” I said. “How do you intend to teach them?”

She spread her arms. “Look around you. Find one thing I’ve sabotaged. The Goreddi war effort is the stronger for my presence, I promise you. Lars and Blanche are perfecting the war
engines; Mina is teaching new sword techniques; my artists are inspiring the people. St. Abaster’s Trap was full of holes; I’ve fixed it. Goredd needed me, and I am here.”

“And Orma?” I said. “I was promised he’d be here.”

Her expression darkened. “You’ll see him when I decide you may.”

“You underestimate my stubbornness,” I said.

Jannoula leaned into my face, lowering her voice to a vicious whisper: “You overestimate my patience. Let me make one thing clear: I could dismantle you before the whole world. I could persuade any of those simpering courtiers to knife you, or each other, or themselves. Bear that in mind.”

I raised my hands, conceding, and she nodded grimly. “Come on,” she said, not reaching for my hand again. “I’ll show you the Garden of the Blessed.”

The Ard Tower, where Glisselda and I had waited for Eskar, was now home to the collected ityasaari. It loomed, dramatically tall, at the western end of the palace complex; the belfry at its top, bellfree for many years, had once warned the citizens of Lavondaville that it was time to take to the tunnels under the city.

“You can see the entire Mews Valley from the top,” Jannoula said as we traversed one last courtyard, crisscrossed with red euonymus hedges. “It will be the perfect place from which to spring St. Abaster’s Trap.”

Lars and Abdo had bowled me over with Abaster’s Trap when
it was just the two of them creating it. Jannoula had many more ityasaari at her disposal. That was a lot of power available to someone I didn’t trust.

Jannoula gazed at the crown of the tower, shading her eyes with one hand. “You realize that we, too, are Saints, as surely as St. Abaster himself.”

“I don’t believe that,” I said.

“Ingar brought me the testament of St. Yirtrudis; I read his translation, but I’d already gleaned that we ityasaari were Saints. It’s in my gift to apprehend these things.”

“The Saints were half-dragons. It doesn’t follow that all half-dragons are Saints.”

“Does it not?” she said, a smile playing on her narrow lips. “Do I not reveal the light of Heaven to humankind? Are we not all ablaze with soul-light? All of us but you.”

I studied her fine-boned face, trying to gauge how much she believed and how much was cynical pretense. She seemed sincere, which only made me more skeptical.

“Even with your stunted soul,” said Jannoula, “it’s still right that you’re here, Seraphina. This is to be the genesis of a new world, a new age of Saints, an era of peace. We will make ourselves a place of safety, and no one will ever harm us again.”

That, or something like it, had been my dream, too. I felt a little queasy.

“You will be my deputy,” she said, taking my arm, smiling as if this were the coziest thing in the world. “We all have jobs to do.”

“And everyone’s happy with this?” I asked, observing her
shrewdly. “St. Pende’s been incapacitated, you broke St. Camba’s ankles, and St. Blanche wants to die.”

“Unavoidable casualties,” she snapped. “Everyone’s mind works differently. I haven’t found the easy way into them yet.”

“You lost St. Abdo altogether,” I said, goading her. I couldn’t stop myself.

“You’ve heard a lot of interesting things.” Her smile was brittle, her eyes hard. “From whom? I wonder. You needn’t worry about any of them.”

“I do worry,” I said quietly.

“Well then, perhaps that can be your job,” she said.

Along the western edge of the courtyard, workmen smoothed sand, laying a new flagstone path. “We’re calling that the Pilgrim’s Way,” she said. “It leads into the city, open and unobstructed for any who wish to approach us devotionally.”

We met townsfolk coming out of the tower, old crones, little girls, young wives of good households with servants in tow. At the sight of Jannoula, they pressed hands to their hearts and gave full courtesy. Two girls, maybe five years old, bumped each other as they curtsied, fell down, and burst into giggles. Jannoula pulled them to their feet, saying, “Stand, little birds, and Heaven smile on you.” Their mother, blushing, thanked Blessed Jannoula and led the giggling sisters away.

Was Jannoula showing them her mind-fire? I wished I could tell when she did it.

Jannoula lingered at the tower door, watching them go. “They come to cook for us and do our laundry. They bring fresh flowers, hang draperies, and sweep our floors.”

“How did you merit so much devotion so quickly?” I asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“I show them Heaven,” said Jannoula, without a trace of irony. “People are so desperate for light.”

She opened the tower door and mounted the spiral stairs. The walls were freshly whitewashed, the steps painted blue and gold. On the first floor, a short hallway spiked off from the stairwell; we didn’t go down it. We paused at the second floor, which comprised a single large room. The vaults of the ceiling were supported by a fat column in the center, like a date tree. Slim arrow loops had been converted to glass windows; a fire roared in the hearth. A lectern at the far end faced rows of stools, arrayed like pews in a chapel. Townswomen dusted the recesses of the vaulted ceiling with rags on long poles, polished the plank floor, and hung garlands of hedge laurel.

Jannoula pulled me back into the stairwell, leading me up two more stories to the fourth floor, where a short hallway ended in four blue doors. She opened one, revealing a wedge-shaped room. “I’ll have your things brought up from your old suite,” she said, leaning in so close she could have kissed me. “Yours is the most coveted room, of course. Directly next to mine.”

By afternoon, eager pilgrims had spirited my possessions—instruments, clothing, books—from my old suite to the Garden of the Blessed. I hovered, supervising, wincing as they banged my
spinet on the spiral stairs. The instrument barely fit beside the narrow bed; I stowed my flute and oud under it. Most of my books were left behind, but I was told I could use Ingar’s library, imported all the way from Samsam, which took up the entire sixth floor. I jammed my sheet music into the crowded chest alongside the new gowns Jannoula had insisted I have, all crisp white linen.

My door hinges shrieked like the restless ghosts of cats. Floorboards grumbled crankily wherever I stepped. With Jannoula next door, sneaking out would be difficult; speaking with Kiggs on my thnik would require circumspection. The walls were thick stone, but rafters rested in open notches below the ceiling. All speech risked being overheard.

I wanted so badly to contact the prince, to learn what he’d done after the council meeting and what he was doing now. Would he try to see Glisselda? There were other ways he could help me; he could spy in the city at large and come to understand the general attitude toward these upstart Saints. If the city was still preparing wholeheartedly for war, what did the people believe about this era of peace Jannoula had told me she was ushering in?

Or he could find my uncle. I had no intention of waiting on Jannoula’s whim.

Jannoula had tasks to attend to, as did most of the ityasaari. I checked every room, starting at the top, and learned that none of the doors locked. I found no one but cooking, cleaning pilgrims, until I reached the bottom floor. In a whitewashed room with a sooty hearth and a shuttered arrow-loop window, Paulos Pende lay upon the narrow bed, Camba in her wheeled chair at his side.

Pende’s eyes were open, but he seemed not to see me. The right side of his face sagged as if it had melted. Camba held his gnarled, arthritic hand.

She smiled sadly at the sight of me. “You came. I’m sorry I can’t stand to greet you. I am not quite as you remember.” She touched her shaved head self-consciously. “I’m in mourning until we are returned to ourselves.”

I closed the door behind me, crossed the plank floor, and kissed her cheeks. “I’m relieved to see Pende lives, but so very sorry you were dragged here. What happened?”

Camba’s eyes were dark and solemn. “Poor Pende. He could not resist her long; he had the skill, but not the strength. Jannoula made a puppet of him. He lay hands on us, as he used to do to pull out her hooks, but now he was putting the hooks in. If anyone refused the touch, he threatened to harm himself.” Camba looked at the old priest with tenderness and sorrow. “In brief moments, when he was himself, he begged me not to acquiesce, to let her kill him. But he is my spiritual father. I couldn’t let it happen.”

The door opened behind me and I startled, but it was only Ingar, carrying an armload of wood and kindling. He bobbed his head at me and began with hazy cheerfulness to build a fire.

Camba watched him, her eyes distant. “Once she caught us, she sent us to the harbor by night. We stole a fishing boat and were halfway across the gulf before anyone missed us, I imagine.”

“She couldn’t possess all of you at once,” I said, as if I could change what had happened by pointing out that it couldn’t have.

“She didn’t have to,” said Camba. “Some have no defenses once she’s in. The twins, Phloxia, Mina. It’s like she turns a
compass in their heads, and suddenly north is south and west is east, and they are easily led in any direction. Brasidas can partition his mind and keep her away from the vital parts, but he’s an old man. What can he do against Mina and her swords? What can I do?”