Seraphina: A Novel Part 6

I would rather play it for him on flute, but he clearly wishes to hear the words and tune together: "My faith should not come easily; There is no Heaven without pain.

My days should never flutter past Unnoted, nor my past remain Beyond its span of usefulness; Let me not hold to grief.

My hope, my light, my Saint is love; In love my one belief."

He stares at me during the last lines and I fear my voice will falter. As it is, I have barely enough breath left in me for "belief." I inhale, but the air seems to catch on its way in, like the shudder of breath after tears.

This emotion is maddening in its complexity. It's like spotting difficult prey on the ground after a long day of fruitless hunting-there's the exhilaration of an exciting chase mixed with the fear that it may all end in nothing, but there is never any question that you will try, for your very existence hangs on it. I am reminded also of the first time I dove from a sea cliff, keeping my wings folded until the last possible second, then scudding over the cresting waves, just out of reach of their foamy fingers, laughing at the danger, terrified by how close I had come.

"I'm so glad you're here," I say. "I understand now that I made you very sad. That was never my intention."

Claude rubs the back of his neck and wrinkles his nose, about to tell me he was never sad. I believe this is called bravado and is not limited to lawyers, or even men, although that combination makes it almost unavoidable. Normally I could shrug at this, but today I need him to be truthful. Today is the beginning and the end. I reach across and take his hand.

That jolt we both feel-for I see it hit him too-is like electricity, but that is a metaphor I will never be able to give him, a concept that cannot be introduced. One of far too many, alas, but I am hoping-no, gambling, betting my very life-that in the end it will not matter, that this, this thing between us, this mystery, will be enough.

"Linn," he says hoa.r.s.ely, his jaw quivering just a little. He is frightened, too. Why should this be frightening? What purpose does that serve? "Linn," he begins again, "when I believed you never wanted to see me again, I felt I'd stepped off a ledge and onto empty air: the ground was hurtling toward me at an alarming rate."

Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach. I have not adequately mastered the art, but his comparisons always move me with their precision. I want to cry Eureka!, but I settle for "I felt that too! That's it exactly!"

My other hand wants to touch his face, and I let it. He leans into it like a cat.

And that is when I know that I will kiss him, and the very thought of it fills me with ... well, it's as if I have just solved Skivver's predictive equations or, even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompa.s.s universes, from the beginning to the end of time.

And I have to laugh a little at this conceit, because I do not even understand the present, and there is nothing in the world beyond this kiss.

The memory ended, ejecting me not into the garden but into real life: cold, hard floor; rumpled chemise; bitter taste in my mouth; alone. I was woozy, disoriented, and ... and ick. That was my father she'd been kissing.

I leaned my head back against the bed, breathing slowly, trying to fend off an emotion so terrible I couldn't bring myself to look at it.

For five years I had suppressed every thought of her. The Amaline Ducanahan of my childhood imaginings had been replaced by emptiness, a chasm, a gap the wind blew through. I couldn't fill that s.p.a.ce with Linn. That name meant nothing to me; it was a placeholder, like zero.

With this single memory, I'd increased my knowledge of her a thousandfold. I knew how a pen felt in her hand, how fast her heart beat upon seeing my father, how beautiful sounds moved her. I knew what she'd felt; I'd been her and felt it myself.

That depth of insight should have fostered empathy, surely. I should have felt some connection, some joy at discovering her, some warm, glowy resolution or peace or something. Something good, at least. Surely it didn't matter which flavor of good?

She was my own mother, for Heaven's sake!

But I felt nothing of the kind. I glimpsed the emotion from afar, saw how bad it was going to be, and squelched it so that I felt nothing at all.

I hauled myself to standing and staggered into the other room. My little timepiece read two hours past midnight, but I didn't care whether I woke Orma up. He'd earned a bad night's sleep. I played our chord and then played it again a bit more peevishly.

Orma's voice crackled forth, unexpectedly loudly: "I wondered whether I'd hear from you. Why didn't you come into town?"

I struggled to keep my voice under control. "You weren't worried, I suppose."

"Worried about what, specifically?"

"One of my grotesques was behaving strangely. I intended to cross town in the dark, but I never made it. It didn't occur to you that something might have happened?"

There was a pause while he considered. "No. I suppose you're going to tell me something did."

I wiped my eyes. I had no energy to argue. I told him all that had happened: Fruit Bat's strange behavior, the vision, the maternal memories. He stayed silent so long after I finished talking that I tapped at the kitten eye. "I'm here," he said. "It is fortunate that nothing worse happened to you when the vision struck."

"Do you have any ideas about Fruit Bat's behavior?" I said.

"He seems to be aware of you," said Orma, "but I don't understand why that would have changed over time. Jannoula saw you right from the beginning."

"And she grew so strong and perceptive that it was hard to get rid of her," I said. "It might be safer to shut Fruit Bat away now, while I still can."

"No, no," said Orma. "If he complies with your requests, he might be a resource rather than a threat. There are so many questions still unanswered. Why are you seeing him? How does he see you? Don't squander this opportunity. You can induce visions: go looking for him."

I ran my fingers over the spinet keys. That last suggestion was a bit much, but cutting Fruit Bat off completely didn't feel right either.

"Maybe he'll find a way to speak to you eventually," Orma was saying.

"Or maybe I'll travel to Porphyry someday, track him down, and shake his hand," I said, smiling slightly. "Not until after Ardmagar Comonot's visit, though. I'll be too busy beforehand. Viridius is a terrible taskmaster."

"That's an excellent idea," said Orma, apparently thinking me serious. "I might come with you. The Porphyrian Bibliagathon is supposed to be well worth seeing."

I grinned at his library obsession and was still grinning when I crawled into bed. I couldn't sleep; in my mind I was already traveling with my uncle, meeting Fruit Bat in the real world, and getting some answers at last.

Between staying up late and rising early for my morning routine, I got far too little sleep. I stumbled stoically through my duties, but Viridius noticed me struggling. "I'll clean your pens," he said, taking the quill from my unresisting hand. "You are to lie down on my couch and nap for half an hour."

"Master, I a.s.sure you I'm-" A gargantuan yawn undermined my argument.

"Of course you are. But we must have you at full capacity for the Blue Salon this evening, and I don't feel convinced that you've been listening quite carefully enough to my dictation." He scanned the parchment where I'd been writing down his compositional ideas as he hummed them. His brows lowered and he turned slightly purple. "You've jotted it down in three. It's a gavotte. Dancers are going to be falling all over each other."

I intended to answer him, but I'd already reached the couch. It pulled me under, and my explanation turned into a dream about St. Polypous dancing a 3/4 gavotte with perfect ease. But then, he had three feet.

That evening I arrived at the Blue Salon early, hoping I might pay my respects, meet Viridius's protege, and leave before most people had even arrived. I saw my mistake at once: Viridius wasn't there yet. Of course he wasn't; he would likely come late, the old c.o.xcomb. I would get no credit for coming if I ducked out before he arrived. All I'd done was given myself extra time to feel uncomfortable.

I'd always been useless at parties, even before I knew how much I had to hide. Large groups of semi-strangers made me clam right up. I antic.i.p.ated standing alone in a corner shoving b.u.t.ter tarts in my mouth all evening.

Even Glisselda wasn't there yet; that was how stupidly early I'd come. Servants lit chandeliers and smoothed tablecloths onto sideboards, stealing surrept.i.tious glances at me. I wandered toward the back of the salon, past the upholstered chairs of the formal sitting area, past the gilded columns, into a wide s.p.a.ce with a parquet floor intended for dancing. Music stands and stools were piled haphazardly in the corner; I set them up for a quartet, hoping I was doing something useful and not merely eccentric.

Five musicians arrived-Guntard, two viols, uillean pipes, and drum-and I set a fifth place. They seemed pleased to see me, and not altogether surprised that the a.s.sistant music mistress should be here, setting up. Maybe I could stand in their corner all evening, turning pages and bringing them ale.

Wine, that is. This was the palace, not the Sunny Monkey.

Courtiers trickled in, resplendent in silks and brocade. I'd worn my best gown, a deep blue calamanco with understated embroidery at all the hemlines, but what pa.s.sed for finery in town felt shabby here. I pressed myself against a wall and hoped no one would speak to me. I knew some of these courtiers: the palace employed professional musicians such as Guntard and the band, but many young gentlemen liked to dabble in music on the side. They usually joined the choir, but that fair-haired Samsamese across from me played a mean viola da gamba.

His name was Josef, Earl of Apsig. He noticed my eyes upon him and ran a hand through his wheaten hair as if to underscore how handsome he was. I looked away.

The Samsamese were known for austerity, but even they outshone me here. Their merchants dressed in browns in town; their courtiers wore expensive blacks, contriving to be simultaneously sumptuous and severe. In case we Goreddis failed to recognize expensive cloth on sight, the Samsamese also spouted great tufts of lace from their cuffs, and stiff white ruffs at their throats.

The Ninysh courtiers, by contrast, tried to incorporate every possible color in their outfits: embroidery, ribbons, parti-colored hose, bright silk peeking through the slashes in their sleeves. Their country lay deep in the gloomy south; there were few colors to be seen there, beyond what they carried with them.

I glimpsed a Ninysh gabled cap in a vibrant green, worn by an elderly woman. She had thick spectacles, which gave her eyes a peevish, bulgy aspect; the heavy creases beside her wide mouth created the impression of an enormous, disapproving toad.

She looked like Miss Fusspots, poor old darling.

No, that was unquestionably Miss Fusspots. That glare could belong to no one else. My heart caught in my throat. I wouldn't need to travel to Porphyry after all; one of my grotesques was standing right across the room!

Miss Fusspots, who was diminutive, disappeared behind a grove of ladies-in-waiting but reemerged moments later beside a redheaded Ninysh courtier. I began to work my way across the room toward her.

I didn't get far, however, because at that very moment Princess Glisselda and Prince Lucian arrived, arm in arm. The crowd opened a wide corridor to let them pa.s.s, and I dared not cross it. The princess gleamed in gold and white, brocade encrusted with seed pearls; she beamed beatifically at the entire room and let a Ninysh courtier lead her to a seat. Prince Lucian, in the scarlet doublet of the Queen's Guard, did not relax until the crowd's adoring gaze had followed his cousin to the other end of the room.

Princess Glisselda took the midnight blue couch, where no one else had dared to sit, and began chatting away to all and sundry. Lucian Kiggs did not sit, but stood a little to the side, his eye upon the room; he never seemed to go off duty. In the adjoining chamber, the musicians finally began with a pleasant sarabande. I looked for Miss Fusspots, but she had disappeared.

"Others may doubt it was a dragon. I do not," said someone behind me in a light Samsamese monotone.

"Ooh, how awful!" said a young woman.

I turned to see Josef, Earl of Apsig, regaling three Goreddi ladies-in-waiting with a tale: "I was part of his final hunting party, grausleine. We had just entered the Queenswood when the hounds scattered in all directions, as if there were twenty stags, not just one. We split up, some following north, some west, each group thinking Prince Rufus was with the other, but when we rejoined, he was nowhere to be found.

"We searched for him until evening, then called out the Queen's Guard and searched all through the night. It was his own dog-a lovely brindle snaphound called Una-who found him, lying faceless and facedown in the nearby fens."

The three ladies gasped. I had turned all the way around and was studying the earl's face. He had pale blue eyes; his complexion was without a single blemish or wrinkle by which to gauge his age. He was trying to impress the ladies, certainly, but seemed to be speaking the truth. I disliked jumping in where I hadn't been invited, but I had to know: "Are you so sure a dragon killed him? Were there clear signs in the fen?"

Josef turned the full force of his handsomeness on me. He lifted his chin and smiled like a Saint in a country church, all piety and graciousness; around him the choir of cherubic ladies-in-waiting stared at me and fluttered, silk gowns rustling. "Who else do you imagine could have killed him, Music Mistress?"

I folded my arms, proof against charm. "Brigands, stealing his head for ransom?"

"There's been no ransom request." He smirked; his cherubs smirked with him.

"The Sons of St. Ogdo, stirring up dracophobia before the Ardmagar arrives?"

He threw back his head and laughed; he had very white teeth. "Come, Seraphina, you've omitted the possibility that he spotted a lovely shepherdess and simply lost his head." The heavenly host rewarded this comment with a symphony of t.i.tters.

I was about to turn away-he knew nothing, clearly-when a familiar baritone chimed in behind me: "Maid Dombegh is right. It's likely the Sons did it."

I stepped a little aside, letting Prince Lucian face Josef unimpeded.

Josef's smile thinned. Prince Lucian hadn't acknowledged the disrespectful innuendo about his uncle Rufus, but he'd surely heard every word. The earl gave exaggerated courtesy. "Begging your pardon, Prince, but why do you not round up the Sons and lock them away, if you're so sure they did it?"

"We'll arrest no one without proof," said the prince, seeming unconcerned. His left boot gave three rapid taps; I noticed and wondered whether I had such unconscious tics. The prince continued, his tone still light: "Unfounded arrests would give the Sons more fodder and bring new ones out of the woodwork. Besides, it's wrong in principle. 'Let the one who seeks justice be just.' "

I looked over at him then, because I recognized that quote. "Pontheus?"

"The same." Prince Lucian nodded approvingly.

Josef sneered. "With all due respect, the Regent of Samsam would never permit a mad Porphyrian philosopher to guide his decisions. Nor would he permit dragons to make a state visit to Samsam-no offense to your Queen, of course."

"Perhaps that is why the Regent of Samsam was not the architect of peace," said the prince, voice calm, foot tapping. "Apparently he has no qualms about receiving the benefits of our mad-Porphyrian-inspired treaty without having to shoulder any of the risks himself. He'll be here for this state visit, more's the headache for me-and I mean that with all the love and respect in the world."

As fascinating as this polite, courtly aggression was, suddenly Miss Fusspots arrested my gaze from across the adjoining room. She accepted a gla.s.s of tawny port from a page boy. I could not get to her without ducking through the dancing, and they'd just started a volta, so there was a great number of flying limbs. I stayed where I was, but did not take my eye off her.

A trumpet flare brought the exuberant dance to an inelegant halt; the band choked off abruptly, and there were several collisions on the dance floor. I did not take my eyes off Miss Fusspots to see what all the bother was, which resulted in my standing all alone in the wide path that had once again opened up.

Prince Lucian grabbed my arm-my right-and hauled me out of the way.

Queen Lavonda herself stood in the doorway. Her face was creased with age but her back was unbent; she had a spine of steel, they said, and her posture confirmed it. She still wore white for her son, from her silk slippers to her wimple and embroidered cap. Her sumptuous sleeves trailed the floor.

Glisselda sprang up off her couch and curtsied deeply. "Grandmamma! You honor us!"

"I'm not staying, Selda, and I'm not here for myself," said the Queen. She had the same voice as her granddaughter, but aged and edged with command. "I have brought you some additional guests," she said, ushering in a group of four saarantrai, Eskar among them. They stood stiffly, as if in military formation. They had not bothered to dress up particularly; their bells were not quite s.h.i.+ny enough to be proper jewelry. Eskar was in Porphyrian trousers again. Everyone stared.

"Oh!" squeaked Glisselda. She curtsied again, trying to recover her composure; her eyes were still large when she rose. "To what do we owe this, um-"

"To a treaty signed nearly forty years ago," said the Queen, who seemed to grow taller as she addressed the entire room. "I believed, perhaps erroneously, that our peoples would simply grow accustomed to each other, given the cessation of warfare. Are we oil and water, that we cannot mix? Have I been remiss in expecting reason and decency to prevail, when I should have rolled up my sleeves and enforced them?"

The humans in the room looked sheepish; the dragons, discomfited.

"Glisselda, see to your guests!" the Queen snapped, and quit the room.

Glisselda quailed visibly. Beside me, Prince Lucian fidgeted and muttered, "Come on, Selda." She could not have heard him, but she lifted her chin as if she had, trying to capture her grandmother's authoritative air. She strode toward Eskar and kissed her on both her cheeks. The little princess had to rise up on her toes to reach. Eskar submitted graciously, inclining her head, and everyone applauded.

Then the soiree resumed, the saarantrai together on one side like a herd of spooked cattle, their bells jingling plaintively, and the other guests milling around them in a wide radius.

I kept my distance, too. Eskar knew me, but I did not care to risk the others smelling me. I wasn't sure what they would do. I might be taken for a scholar with a bell exemption, or Eskar might tactlessly proclaim my parentage aloud, to be overheard by the whole room.

Surely she wouldn't. Orma had told me that interbreeding violated ard so egregiously that no dragon would entertain the idea that I was possible, let alone utter it aloud.

"I dare you to ask her to dance," said a gentleman behind me, snapping me out of my preoccupations. For a moment I thought he meant me.

"Which one?" intoned the omnipresent Earl of Apsig.

"Your choice," laughed his friend.

"No, I mean which one is a 'her'? They're so mannish, these dragon females."

I bristled at that, but why? They weren't talking about me-except that, in some oblique way, they were.

"The real difficulty with these worm-women," said Josef, "is their extremely inconvenient dent.i.tion."

"Dent.i.tion?" asked his friend, who was apparently slow on the uptake.

I felt my face grow hot.

"Teeth," said Josef, spelling it out. "In all the wrong places, if you follow me."

"Teeth in ... Oh! Ow!"

" 'Ow' is understating it, friend. Their males are no better. Picture a harpoon! And they'd like nothing better than to impale our women and rip out their-"

I could take no more; I rushed away, skirting the dance floor, until I found a window. I unlatched it with trembling hands, desperate for air. Eyes closed, I pictured the tranquility of my garden, until my embarra.s.sment had been replaced by sorrow.

It was just a joke between gentlemen, but I heard in it all the jokes they would tell about me if they knew.