24
BUT WHOM COULD I tell?
Kiggs was mad at me. Glisselda would wonder how I knew and why I had not come forward sooner. I supposed I could lie and say Orma had only just told me, but the very thought of Orma made me sick at heart.
I should tell Orma. It struck me that he would want to know.
I rose at first light and sat at the spinet, hugging myself against the morning chill. I played Orma’s chord, having no idea whether he would answer or whether he had already departed for parts unknown.
The kitten buzzed to life. “I’m here.”
“That’s eighty-three percent of what I wanted to know.”
“What’s the other seventeen?”
“When do you leave? I need to talk to you.”
There was a silence punctuated by thumps, as if he were setting down heavy books. If he was packing up every book he owned, he’d be lucky to be gone within the week. “Do you remember that newskin I was burdened with? He’s still here.”
Saints’ dogs. “Haven’t you been deemed unfit to mentor him?”
“Either no one cares that I’m leading him toward deviancy—possible, given how useless he is—or they think he’ll be a help packing, which he is not.”
The kitten broadcast some disgruntled muttering, and then my uncle said clearly, “No, you’re not.” I smiled wan sympathy at the kitten eye. “In answer to your question,” he said at last, “I will depart for home and the surgeons in three days, upon your New Year, after I’ve packed up everything here. I will do exactly what is required of me by law. I am caught, and I am chastened, and there is no other alternative.”
“I need to talk to you alone. I want to say goodbye while you still know me.”
There was a very long pause, and for a moment I thought he had gone. I tapped the kitten eye in concern, but at last his voice came through, weakly: “My apologies, this body’s ridiculous larynx seized up, but it seems to be functioning again. Will you come into town tomorrow with the rest of the court, to watch the Golden Plays?”
“I can’t. Tomorrow is dress rehearsal for the Treaty Eve concert.”
“Then I don’t see how it will be possible to speak with you. Here’s where I emit a thunderous oath, I believe.”
“Do it,” I urged him, but this time he really was gone.
I puzzled over all his odd emphases while I tended my scales and dressed and drank my tea. I may have witnessed the first known incidence of a dragon attempting sarcasm. It was a pity I didn’t know how the spinet device worked because it surely could have recorded his utterance for future generations of dragons to learn from: This, hatchlings, is a valiant effort, but not quite it.
I tried to laugh at that, but it rang hollow. He was leaving; I did not know when or where or for how long. If he was fleeing the Censors, he couldn’t risk staying near me. He would be gone for good. I might get no chance to say goodbye.
Something had changed during the day I’d spent abed. The halls were devoid of chatter; everyone went about their business looking grim and anxious. Dragons loose in the countryside didn’t sit well with anyone, apparently. As I walked to breakfast, I noticed people scuttling into side rooms at my approach, refusing to meet my eye or bid me good morning if they found themselves forced to pass me in the corridor.
Surely no one was blaming me? I’d found Imlann, but I hadn’t sent the petit ard after him; that had been up to the Queen and the council. I told myself I was imagining things until I entered the north tower dining hall and the entire room fell silent.
There was space on the bench between Guntard and the scrawny sackbutist, if either of them moved over an inch. “Your pardon,” I said, but they pretended not to hear. “I would like to sit here,” I said, but each had an extremely interesting bowl of groats in front of him and couldn’t look up. I hoisted my skirts and stepped over the bench in unladylike fashion; they couldn’t scoot fast enough then. In fact, the sackbutist decided his breakfast wasn’t that fascinating after all and abandoned it entirely.
I couldn’t catch the serving lad’s eye; nobody at the table would acknowledge me. I couldn’t take it: these fellows were, if not exactly friends, colleagues and the authors of my praise song. Surely that counted for something. “Out with it, then,” I said. “What’ve I done to earn the silent treatment?”
They looked at each other, sidelong and shifty-eyed. Nobody wanted to be the one to talk. Finally Guntard said, “Where were you last evening?”
“In bed, asleep, making up for a sleepless night the night before.”
“Ah, right, your heroic expedition to find the rogue dragon,” said a crumhornist, picking his teeth with a kipper bone. “Well, now you’ve given the dragons an excuse for roaming Goredd freely, and Princess Glisselda an excuse for having us all jabbed!”
“Jabbed?” All around the table, musicians held up bandaged fingers. Some of the fingers were rude ones. I tried not to take that personally, but it wasn’t easy.
“The princess’s species-check initiative,” grunted Guntard.
There was only one foolproof way to tell a saarantras: the silver blood. Glisselda was trying to flush out Imlann, if he was concealed at court.
A lutist waved his fish fork dangerously. “Look at her; she has no intention of letting herself get poked!”
Dragons don’t blush; they turn pale. My red cheeks might have banished doubts, but of course they didn’t. I said, “I’ll gladly cooperate. This is the first I’m hearing of it, is all.”
“I told you oafs,” said Guntard, throwing an arm across my shoulders, suddenly my champion. “I don’t care what the rumors say, our Phina’s no dragon!”
The bottom fell out of my stomach. Blue St. Prue. There was a huge difference between “won’t take a jab like the rest of us” and “is rumored to be a dragon in disguise.” I tried to keep my voice light, but it came out squeaky: “What rumor is this?”
Nobody knew who’d started it, but it had run through court the day before like fire over summer fields. I was a dragon. I’d gone not to hunt down the rogue but to warn him. I could speak Mootya. I had devices. I had willfully endangered the prince.
I sat there, stunned, trying to work out who could have said all these things. Kiggs might have, but I was unwilling to believe him so spiteful. No, unwilling was too tepid: it was unthinkable. I had little faith in Heaven, but I had faith in his honor, even when he was angry. Perhaps especially while angry—he struck me as someone who would cleave harder to his principles under duress.
But then who?
“I’m not a dragon,” I said feebly.
“Let’s test that right now,” said Guntard, slapping his palms on the table. “Put everybody’s mind at ease and have a spot of fun, all in one go.”
I recoiled, thinking he intended to stab me—with what, his porridge spoon?—but he rose and grabbed my left arm. I yanked it away ungently, my smile brittle as glass, but rose to follow, hoping he’d feel no need to grab me again if I came willingly. Eyes followed us from all quarters.
We crossed the eerily silent dining hall and stopped at the dragons’ table. There were only two this morning, a pasty male and short-haired female, lowly amanuenses who had not gone hunting Imlann, but were left behind to run the embassy offices. They sat stiffly, rolls halfway to their mouths, staring at Guntard as though he were some talking turnip who had sneaked up on them.
“Your pardon, saarantrai,” cried Guntard, addressing the whole room, tables, windows, serving lads, and all. “You can recognize your own kind by smell. True?”
The saarantrai exchanged a wary glance. “The word of a saarantras does not hold up in court on certain issues, and this is one,” said the male, fastidiously wiping his fingers on the tablecloth. “If you’re hoping to evade the species check, we can’t help you.”
“Not me. Our music mistress, Seraphina. She will submit to the bleed, as will all of us who must, but there have been vicious, hateful rumors circulating and I want them put to rest.” Guntard put one hand to his chest and the other in the air, like a blowhard in a play. “She is my friend, not some vile, deceitful dragon! Smell her and affirm it.”
I couldn’t move; I had wrapped my arms around myself, as if that alone prevented me from spontaneously combusting. The saarantrai had to rise and approach me in order to get close enough to discern anything. The female sniffed behind my ear, holding my hair aside like a dark curtain. The male bent over my left hand theatrically; he’d get a noseful. I’d changed the bandage on my self-inflicted wound this morning, but he would unquestionably discern it. Maybe I smelled edible; my blood was red as any Goreddi’s.
I clenched my teeth, bracing for the blow. The saarantrai stepped away and reseated themselves without a word.
“Well?” demanded Guntard. The entire room held its breath.
Here it came. I said a little prayer.
The female spoke: “Your music mistress is not a dragon.”
Guntard started clapping, like a handful of gravel tossed down the mountainside, and little by little more hands joined in until I was buried under an avalanche of applause.
I gaped at the saarantrai. They could not have failed to smell dragon. Had they assumed I was a bell-exempt scholar and kept quiet out of respect for my supposed research? Perhaps.
“Shame on all of you, believing rumors!” said Guntard. “Seraphina has never been anything but honorable, fair, and kind, a fast friend and an excellent musician—”
The male saar blinked, slowly, like a frog swallowing its dinner; the female gestured toward the sky in a subtle but unmistakable way. My doubts dissolved: they’d smelled me. They’d lied. Maybe they hoped I was an unauthorized dragon, just to spite Guntard and everyone else nodding agreement at all the noble, moral, non-draconian qualities I possessed.
I had never seen the rift between our peoples laid out so starkly. These saarantrai wouldn’t lift a finger for the humans in this room; they might not have turned in Imlann himself. How many dragons would take his side if their choice was between submitting to Goreddi bigotry and breaking the law?
Guntard was still clapping me on the back and extolling my human virtues. I turned and walked out of the hall without my breakfast. I imagined Guntard failing to notice I had gone, clapping at the empty air.
“I want you to take tomorrow off. See the Golden Plays, visit your family, go out drinking, anything. I’ll handle dress rehearsal,” said Viridius, in his suite after choir practice. He’d been dictating a composition; his comment surprised me so that I jammed the quill awkwardly against a rough patch of parchment, creating an enormous inkblot.
“Have I done something wrong, sir?” I asked, dabbing at the mess with a rag.
He leaned back on his velvet cushion and gazed out the window at the overcast sky and the snowy courtyard. “Quite the contrary. You improve upon everything you touch. I think you’ve earned a day of rest.”
“I just had a day of rest. Two, if being beset by dragons counts as rest.”
He chewed his lower lip. “The council passed a resolution last night—”
“The species-check initiative? Guntard told me.”
He gazed at me keenly. “I thought you might prefer not to be here.”
My hands went clammy; I wiped them on my skirts. “Sir, if you are referring to a rumor circulated about me, by persons unknown, I can assure you—”
He put his gout-swollen, clawlike hand on my forearm and raised his rusty brows. “I’ll put in a good word for you,” he said. “I know I’m not the cuddliest old brick, not always easy to work with, but you’ve done well. If I don’t say so often, it doesn’t mean I don’t notice. You’re the most talented thing we’ve had round these parts since Tertius was taken from us, may he dine at Heaven’s table.”
“Put in a good word for me why?”
His thick lips quivered. “Seraphina, I knew your mother.”
I gasped. “You are mistaken, sir.” The room seemed not to contain enough air.
“I heard her perform at Château Rodolphi in Samsam, some twenty years ago, when I was traveling with Tertius—rest he on Heaven’s hearthstone. She was utterly captivating. When Tertius told me she was a saar, I didn’t believe him at first.”
Viridius gestured toward the ewer; I poured him a cup of water, but when I brought it to him, he said, “No, no, for you. You’ve gone purple around the gills. Calm yourself, child. I’ve known all along, haven’t I? And said nothing?”
I nodded shakily. The cup clattered against my teeth.
He idly tapped his cane on the floor until he thought I was ready to listen again. “I asked Linn to teach at St. Ida’s, where I was headmaster at the time. She said she couldn’t; she was a student herself, just finishing up her research. I sponsored her petition for bell exemption, that she might pursue her research here without terrifying the librarians—or her students, because I hoped she’d teach. It seemed ideal.”
I found myself desperate to slap him, as if he were the author of all my troubles. “It wasn’t ideal.”
“In hindsight, perhaps that’s not surprising. She could really pass, your mother, and she was something extraordinary. She wasn’t bothered with daintiness or coyness or other flavors of silliness; she was strong and practical, and she took no nonsense from anyone. If I’d any interest in women, even I could have seen my way to loving her. It was academic, of course, like the idea that one might shift the entire world with a long-enough lever. One could, but one can’t. Close your mouth, dear.”
My heart palpated painfully. “You knew she was a saar and my father was human, and you never told anyone?”
He heaved himself to his feet and limped over to the window. “I’m a Daanite. I don’t go around criticizing other people’s love affairs.”
“As her sponsor, weren’t you supposed to report her to the embassy before it went too far?” I said, my voice full of tears. “Couldn’t you have warned my father, at the very least?”
“It seems so obvious, in retrospect,” he said quietly, examining a spot on the front of his loose linen shirt. “At the time, I was merely happy for her.”
I took a shaky breath. “Why are you telling me now? You haven’t decided to—”
“To give up my peerless assistant? Do I look mad to you, maidy? Why do you think I’m warning you about the bleed? We’ll spirit you away somewhere, or we’ll find one trustworthy person high up who can keep a secret. The prince—”
“No,” I said, too quickly. “There’s no need. My blood is as red as yours.”
He sighed. “So I’ve gone and revealed how much I admire your work for nothing. Now you’ll feel free to laze around self-importantly, I suppose!”
“Viridius, no,” I said, stepping toward him and impulsively kissing his balding head. “I’m well aware that that’s your job.”
“Damned right,” he grumbled. “And I’ve earned it, too.”
I helped him back to his gout couch, and he finished dictating the major theme and two subthemes of his composition, along with an idea for metamorphosing each into the other, involving an extraordinary transposition. I jotted everything down mechanically at first; it took some time for me to settle down after Viridius’s revelation about my mother, but the music calmed and then awed me. I was gawping inside, like a country girl seeing the cathedral for the first time. Here were flying buttresses and rose windows of music; here columns and vaulting, more prosaic structural elements; and all of it in service to a unified purpose, to clarifying and perfecting the majestic space inside, a soaring expanse as awe-inspiring as the architecture that bounded it.
“I suspect you of not taking me seriously,” grumped Viridius as I cleaned my pens and made ready to depart.
“Sir?” I said, stricken. I had spent the last hour in awe of his artistry. That qualified as taking someone seriously, to my mind.
“You are new enough to court that perhaps you don’t understand the damage rumors can do. Get gone, maidy. There is no shame in a strategic retreat while you wait for Scandal, that damned basilisk, to turn its withering gaze elsewhere—especially if you’re someone who, in fact, has something to hide.”
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said, giving him half courtesy.
“No, you won’t,” he muttered as I turned to go. “You’re too like your mother.”
Daylight failed impossibly early, assisted by a glowering cloud cover; more snow was coming. After a full day of errands and tasks, I had only the princess’s harpsichord lesson left. She’d had a hectic day herself, overrun with council-related duties; five messengers found me over the course of the day, each requesting a further delay of her lesson until it had been pushed back to almost suppertime. As I approached the south solar one last messenger intercepted me; I must’ve rolled my eyes, because the lad stuck out his tongue before scurrying up the hall.
The note had clearly been dictated. It read: The princess requests that you meet her downstairs in the second laundry. It is urgent. Come immediately.
I blinked at the parchment in confusion. Why would Glisselda want to meet in such an obscure place? Perhaps she was afraid of being overheard.
I ducked down a servants’ stairway to the narrow, utilitarian passages below. I passed under the great hall and the chambers of state, past storerooms, servants’ quarters, and the barred, gloomy entrance of the donjon. I passed a sweltering laundry, but it was the wrong one—or so I deduced by the distinct absence of Princess Glisselda. I questioned a laundress, who pointed me further down the corridor into darkness.
I reached the furnace belonging to the hypocaust for the Queen’s bathroom. Three grimy men fed coal into its open mouth, which reminded me uncomfortably of Imlann’s.
The men leered at me, too, leaning on their shovels and grinning toothlessly.
I paused, the stink of coal heavy in my nostrils. Had I understood the laundress properly? Surely no one would want to wear clothing washed in such close proximity to coal fumes?
I considered asking the hypocaust stokers for directions, but there was something ominous in their aspect. I watched them shoveling; I could not seem to turn away. The heat blasted against my exposed face, even from this distance. Their silhouettes were dark holes in the frantic firelight. Acrid smoke permeated the entire room, making my eyes and lungs sting.
It was like the Infernum, the torments that awaited souls who rejected the light of Heaven. Somehow, eternal pain was still considered preferable to having no soul at all. I wasn’t sure I saw why.
I turned my back upon this hellish vision. A dark, horned figure stepped directly into my path.