Shadow Scale (68 page)

“I do what I have always done,” I said, suddenly realizing the truth of it. “I reach across and bring the worlds together.”

Nothing was just one thing; there were worlds within worlds. Those of us who trod the line between were blessed and burdened with both.

I stepped from the carriage into sunlight, into the crowd, smiling. I walked myself into the world.

My new suite had belonged to Selda’s mother, Princess Dionne. The bedroom had been entirely refurbished, but I hadn’t let them touch the sitting room; I liked the dark paneling and heavy carven furniture. Selda had insisted I take the harpsichord that once graced the south solar, and I couldn’t resist. It fit awkwardly in the room, but what else was I to do with all this space?

I was at the instrument that rainy afternoon when a page boy showed him in. I didn’t look up; this was going to take all my courage, and I needed a little more music to get there. He wouldn’t mind my being rude.

He seated himself near the door to wait me out. I had been playing one of Viridius’s fantasias, but I switched smoothly to my mother’s composition, a fugue she’d written in honor of her
brother. I loved it beyond all reckoning. It captured him perfectly: the solidity of the bass notes, the rationality of the middle ranges, and then the occasional, unexpected twinkle in the treble. Stillness and motion and a touch of sorrow—my mother’s sorrow. She had missed him.

I missed him, too, but I could bear this. I took a deep breath.

I rolled the last arpeggios and then turned to face him. Orma still wore the mustard-colored habit of St. Gobnait’s Order. I twisted his ring on my finger, hoping I’d deduced its meaning correctly, that he’d really made a mind-pearl.

Finding it would be a challenge.

He was looking not at me but at the coffered ceiling, his mouth open slightly. I said, “Brother Norman?”

He startled. “I interrupt your practice,” he said.

That had been intentional. I said, “Did you recognize that song?”

He goggled at me, apparently trying to parse the surprising question. That was how it had to be from now on, if we were to find the untidy edges of any remaining memories. We would have to take them by surprise.

“I don’t know,” he said at last.

I took anything other than a negative answer as encouraging. “Did you like it?” I pressed.

He looked blank. “The abbot said you need an amanuensis and wish to interview me, but I have no interest in the position. I suspect you would like to continue your earlier line of inquiry, but that will be fruitless. I have no memory of you before Jannoula brought me here. I only want to finish my studies and go back—”

“Are you really so interested in monastic history?” I asked.

Wintry rain lashed the windows. Orma pushed up his spectacles; his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “No,” he said at last. “But the destultia I take for my heart is an emotional suppressant. I’m not interested in anything, per se.”

“It leaves you unable to fly when you are full-sized.” I’d been reading up.

He nodded. “That’s why we don’t all take it as a matter of course.”

“Do you remember what it’s like to fly?”

He raised his dark, inscrutable eyes to mine. “How could I not? If they cut that out of me, they’d have to take too much. I’d have no memory … left.…” His gaze grew distant for a moment.

“There are pieces missing,” I said. “You’ve noticed.”

He fingered the scar on his scalp. “I hadn’t, until you suggested it. I would chalk it up to diagnosis bias, but …” His expression was like a closed curtain. “There are a few things that don’t make sense.”

There was some inherent trait in him, some tendency to question, that had gotten him into as much trouble as emotions, if not more. Surely I could revive that curiosity if I prodded. “That song I was playing? You taught me that. You were my teacher.”

His eyes were obscured behind the glare off his glasses. The wind rattled the windows.

“Come work with me,” I said. “You can be weaned off the destultia; I know the trick of it. We will rediscover what they’ve stolen.” I held out my hand and waggled the ring at him. “I think you made yourself a mind-pearl before you were caught.”

He tented his long fingers. “If you’re wrong, if I really do have pyrocardia, I will very likely die.”

“Ye-es,” I said slowly, wondering whether pyrocardia was something the Censors might have given him somehow, as a surprise present. I’d have to ask Eskar when she arrived. “I suppose you might die. But are you finding monastic history a very compelling reason to live?”

“I’m not human,” he said. “I don’t require a reason to live. Living is my default condition.”

I couldn’t help it; I laughed, and tears welled in my eyes. That answer was so quintessentially Orma, distilled to his elemental Orma-ness.

He watched me laugh as if I were an inexplicably noisy bird. “I’m not convinced this is worth your time or mine,” he said.

My heart contracted painfully. “Don’t you ever wish you could fly again?”

He shrugged. “If it means dying in flames, my wishes are irrelevant.”

I took that as a definite yes. “You used to fly with your mind. Metaphorically. You used to be interested in everything. You asked inconvenient questions all the time.” My voice broke; I cleared my throat.

He stared at me but said nothing.

My heart sank. “Aren’t you curious, even a little?”

“No,” he said.

He rose as if to go. I stood, too, and paced toward the windows, despairing. I couldn’t make him stop taking destultia, or
force him to be my friend. He could walk out of the room and refuse to see me again, and there was nothing I could do about it.

From behind me came the sound of a bench scraping on the floor, and then a few tentative notes on the harpsichord, like a child might make, cautiously approaching the instrument for the first time.

I kept my eyes on the rivulets running down the glass.

There was a chord, and then another, and then a small explosion of sparkly notes—the opening strains of Viridius’s
Suite Infanta
.

I turned sharply, my heart in my throat. Orma’s eyes were closed. He played the first three lines, then faltered and stopped.

He opened his eyes and looked into mine.

“One thing they can’t remove without damaging other systems is muscle memory,” he said quietly. “My hands did that. What was it?”

“A fantasia you used to play,” I said.

He nodded slowly. “I’m still not curious. But …” He stared at the rain. “I begin to wish I
could
be.”

I gestured to him to move over on the bench. He made room for me, and we sat together the rest of that afternoon, not talking, but letting our hands walk over the keys and remember.

This book was a beast to write. The following people ensured I was not eaten:

Arwen Brenneman and Rebecca Sherman, whom I can never thank enough; Phoebe North and the Glassboard Gang; Naithan Bossé and Earle Peach, who got me thinking about harmonics at just the right moment; Inchoiring Minds and Madrigalians; Becca, who showed me the taiga; Tamora Pierce, who knows about battling Grendels; Rose Curtin and Steph Sinclair, consultants to the clueless; Iarla Ó Lionáird; Jacob Arcadelt; Josquin des Prez; Bessie, my trusty bike; and my mother, who’s always happy to talk about art.

I gratefully acknowledge the late Douglas Adams, to whom I owe the idea of an inside-out house, and Pink Floyd, to whom there are more sly allusions in this book than I can count.

Finally, thanks to Jim, Dan, Mallory, and the fabulous folks at Random House, who have been unflaggingly supportive and kind. And to Scott, Byron, and Úna, my heart and home.

Seraphina Dombegh
—our charming heroine, often called Phina, half-dragon

Queen Lavonda
—ill and abdicated

Rufus, Dionne, and Laurel
—Lavonda’s unlucky children, all dead

Queen Glisselda
—plucky new head of state

Prince Lucian Kiggs
—Glisselda’s cousin and fiancé

Viridius
—court composer, Seraphina’s erstwhile employer

Lars
—designer of trebuchets, lover of loud music, half-dragon

Abdo
—dancer and scamp, possible property of a god, half-dragon

Tython
—Abdo’s pious grandfather

Dame Okra Carmine
—undiplomatic Ninysh ambassador, half-dragon

Alberdt
—resistant guardsman

dozy page boy
—sleeping on the job

Josquin
—Dame Okra’s distant cousin, a chin-bearded herald

Captain Moy
—leader of the Eight, the authoritative chin beard

Nan
—Moy’s doughty daughter

Des Osho
—the Eight, Phina’s armed escort through Ninys

Nedouard Basimo
—kleptomaniac plague doctor, half-dragon

Blanche
—reclusive hermit, fond of spiders, half-dragon

Od Fredricka des Uurne
—muralist with a chip on her shoulder, half-dragon

Gianni Patto
—claw-footed bogeyman of the Ninysh mountains, half-dragon

Count Pesavolta
—ruler of Ninys and reluctant funder of quests

Hanse
—terse old huntsman who escorts Phina through Samsam

Rodya
—unwashed young bravo, the other escort

Josef, Earl of Apsig
—Lars’s half brother, disdainer of dragonkind, up to no good

Jannoula
—banished from Phina’s mind, half-dragon

Ingar, Earl of Gasten
—lover of books, learner of languages, disciple of Jannoula, half-dragon

Naia
—Abdo’s favorite auntie

Paulos Pende
—elderly priest with a powerful mind, leader of the half-dragons, or ityasaari, in Porphyry

Zythia Perdixis Camba
—statuesque lady, unexpectedly familiar, ityasaari

Amalia Perdixis Lita
—Camba’s aged mother, Agogoi

Mina
—winged officer of the law, ityasaari

Brasidas
—blind market singer, ityasaari

Phloxia
—shark-toothed lawyer (literally), ityasaari

Gaios and Gelina
—handsome fleet-footed twins, ityasaari

Ardmagar Comonot
—deposed leader of dragonkind, bothering the Queen

Orma
—Phina’s uncle, on the run

Eskar
—former undersecretary of the dragon embassy; running with Orma, or pursuing her own plans?