Seraphina Page 11

  “I thought hoarding was illegal.”

  “Even I am older than that law. I remember his hoard from when I was a child, every coin and cup of it.” His gaze grew distant again and he licked his lips as if gold were something he missed the taste of. He shook it off and grimaced at me. “My father was forced to give it up, of course, although he resisted for years. The Ardmagar let it pass until your mother’s disgrace stained us all.”

  He rarely spoke about my mother; I found myself holding my breath. He said, “When Linn took up with Claude and refused to come home, the Censors flagged our entire family for mental health scrutiny. My mother killed herself for shame, confirming a second irrefutable case of madness in the family.”

  “I remember,” I said hoarsely.

  He continued: “You’ll also recall that my father was a prominent general. He didn’t always agree with Ardmagar Comonot, but his loyalty and his glorious career were beyond dispute. After Linn …” He trailed off as if he couldn’t say “fell in love”; it was too horrible to contemplate. “Suddenly our father was being watched, every action probed, every utterance dissected. Suddenly they no longer turned a blind eye to his hoard, or to his occasional resistance.”

  “He fled before his trial, didn’t he?” I said.

  Orma nodded, his eyes on the coin. “Comonot banished him in absentia; no one has seen him since. He’s still wanted for stirring up dissent against the Ardmagar’s reforms.”

  His carefully neutral expression was breaking my heart, but there was nothing human I could do to help him. “So what does the coin signify?” I asked.

  Orma looked at me over his spectacles, as if it were the most unnecessary question ever uttered. “He’s in Goredd. You may be certain of it.”

  “Didn’t his hoard get reabsorbed into the High Ker’s treasury?”

  He shrugged. “Who knows what the wily saar contrived to take with him.”

  “Could no one else have sent it? The Board of Censors, to gauge your reaction?”

  Orma pursed his lips and gave a tight shake of his head. “No. This was our signal when I was a child. This very coin. It admonished me to behave at school. ‘Don’t shame us,’ was the sense of it. ‘Remember your family.’ ”

  “What can it possibly mean in this context?”

  His face looked thinner than before; his false beard fit poorly, or he hadn’t bothered to put it on quite straight. He said, “I believe Imlann was at the funeral, and he suspects I may have noticed him, though in fact I did not. He’s telling me to stay out of his way, to pretend I don’t recognize his saarantras if I see it, and to let him do what honor demands.”

  I folded my arms; the room seemed suddenly colder. “Do what? And more urgently: to whom? To the man his daughter married? To their child?”

  Orma’s brown eyes widened behind his spectacles. “That had not occurred to me. No. Do not fear for yourself; he believes Linn died childless.”

  “And my father?”

  “He never permitted your father’s name to be spoken in his presence. Your father’s very existence violates ard, and was vigorously denied by everyone.”

  Orma picked lint off the knee of his woolen hose; he wore a pair of silks underneath, or he’d have been scratching like a flea-bitten hound. “Who knows what Imlann has been stewing upon for the last sixteen years?” he said. “He has no incentive to obey the law or keep his human emotions under wraps. Even for myself, constantly monitored and obeying the law as best I can, this shape takes a toll. The borderlands of madness used to have much sterner signage around them than they do now.”

  “If you don’t think he’s after Papa and me, then what? Why would he be here?”

  “This close to Comonot’s visit?” He stared over the rims of his glasses again.

  “An assassination?” He was making great suppositional leaps, or else I was. “You think he’s plotting against the Ardmagar?”

  “I think it would be foolish to close our eyes and proceed as if he weren’t.”

  “Well then, you’ve got to tell Prince Lucian and the Guard about this.”

  “Ah. That’s just it.” He leaned back and tapped the edge of the coin against his teeth. “I can’t. I’m caught—what’s your expression?—between a rock and another rock? I’m too involved. I do not trust myself to make an unemotional decision.”

  I studied his face again, the crease between his brows. He was unquestionably struggling with something. “You don’t want to turn him in, because he’s your father?”

  Orma rolled his eyes toward me, the whites flashing like a frightened animal’s. “Quite the contrary. I want to set the Guard on him, want to see him brought to trial, want to see him hang. And not because he is truly, logically, a danger to the Ardmagar—because you’re right, he might not be—but because, in fact, I … I hate him.”

  Absurdly, my first response to this was a knot of jealousy, like a fist to the stomach, that he not only felt something, but felt it intensely about someone who wasn’t me. I reminded myself that it was hatred; I could not possibly prefer that to his benevolent indifference, could I? I said, “Hate is serious. You’re sure?”

  He nodded, finally letting everything show on his face for more than a fraction of a second. He looked terrible.

  “How long have you felt this?” I asked.

  He shrugged hopelessly. “Linn was not just my sister; she was my teacher.”

  Orma had often told me that among dragons there was no higher word of esteem than teacher; teachers were more revered than parents, spouses, even the Ardmagar himself.

  “When she died and the shame fell on our family,” he said, “I could not denounce her the way my father could—the way we were all supposed to, for the satisfaction of the Ardmagar. We fought; he bit me—”

  “He bit you?”

  “We’re dragons, Phina. The one time you saw me …” He gestured vaguely with his hand, as if he didn’t want to say it aloud, as if I’d seen him naked—which I guess technically I had. “I kept my wings folded, so you probably didn’t notice the damage to the left, where the bone was once broken.”

  I shook my head, horrified for him. “Can you still fly?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said absently. “But you must understand: in the end I denounced her, under duress. My mother killed herself anyway. My father was banished anyway. In the end—” His lips trembled. “I don’t know what it was for.”

  There were tears in my eyes, if not in his. “The Board of Censors would have sent you down for excision if you hadn’t.”

  “Yes, that’s highly likely,” he mused, his tone back to a studied neutral.

  The Censors would have excised my mother, too, reached in and stolen every loving memory of my father. In my head, the tin box of memories gave a painful twitch.

  “Denouncing her didn’t even free me from the Censors’ scrutiny,” said Orma. “They don’t know my true difficulties, but they assume I have some, given my family history. They suspect, certainly, that I care more for you than is permitted.”

  “That’s what Zeyd was sent to test,” I said, trying to keep the bitterness from my voice.

  He squirmed, imperceptibly to any eye but mine. He had never shown the tiniest bit of remorse for putting me in mortal danger as a child; this fleeting discomfiture was the best I could expect.

  “I don’t intend to give them any inkling of my real difficulty,” he said, handing me the coin. “Do with it what you think right.”

  “I’ll turn it over to Prince Lucian Kiggs, though I don’t know what he can do with your vague premonition. Any advice on recognizing Imlann’s saarantras?”

  “I’d recognize him, unless he’s in disguise. I’d know him if I smelled him,” said Orma. “My father’s saarantras was lean, but he may have spent the last sixteen years exercising, or forcing custard down his gullet. I can’t know. He had blue eyes, unusual in a saar but not in a Southlander. Fair hair is easily dyed.”

  “Could Imlann pass as easily as Linn?”
I asked. “Was he practiced in courtly manners, or musical like his children? Where might he try blending in?”

  “He’d do best as a soldier, I should think, or concealed somewhere at court, but he’d know I would expect that. He’ll be somewhere no one would expect.”

  “If he was at the funeral and saw you without your seeing him, it’s likely he would have been standing …” Saints’ dogs. Orma had been at the center of everything. I’d seen him from behind the quire screen; he might have been seen from any angle.

  Orma stiffened. “Do not go looking for Imlann yourself. He might kill you.”

  “He doesn’t know I exist.”

  “He doesn’t need to know you’re you to kill you,” said Orma. “He needs only believe you’re trying to stop him doing whatever he’s here to do.”

  “I see,” I said, half laughing. “Better Prince Lucian Kiggs than me, I suppose.”

  “Yes!”

  The vehemence of that yes made me stagger back a step. I could not reply; some emotion had seized my throat.

  Someone was rapping on the lopsided door. I moved the door to the side, expecting one of the librarian monks.

  There slumped Basind, the disjointed newskin, breathing loudly through his mouth. His eyes pointed two different directions. I recoiled, holding the door before me like a shield. He pushed past, jingling like an Allsaints wreath, gaping at the room, and stumbling over a pile of books.

  Orma was on his feet in an instant. “Saar Basind,” he said. “What brings you to St. Ida’s?”

  Basind fished around in his shirt, then in his pants, finally locating a folded letter addressed to Orma. Orma read it quickly and held it out to me. I put the door back in its place, grasped the letter with two fingers, and read:

  Orma: You will recall Saar Basind. We find him useless at the embassy. Apparently the Ardmagar owes Basind’s mother a favor for turning in her hoarding husband. Basind should never have been permitted to come south otherwise. He needs remedial human behavior lessons. Given your family history, and your own ability to pass, it occurs to me that you might be the ideal teacher.

  Give whatever time you have to give, recalling that you are in no position to refuse this request. In particular, persuade him to keep his clothes on in public. The situation is that dire. All in ard, Eskar.

  Orma uttered no cry of dismay. I exclaimed for him: “St. Daan in a pan!”

  “Evidently they’re anxious to get him out from underfoot while they prepare for the Ardmagar’s arrival,” said Orma evenly. “That’s not unreasonable.”

  “But what are you to do with him?” I lowered my voice, because anyone could be on the other side of the bookcases. “You’re trying to pass among the music students; how do you explain being saddled with a newskin?”

  “I’ll devise something.” He gently removed a book from Basind’s hands and put it on a high shelf. “I might plausibly be homebound with pneumonia this time of year.”

  I didn’t want to leave until I was sure he was all right, and I particularly didn’t want to leave him with the newskin, but Orma was adamant. “You have a lot of other things to do,” he said, opening the door for me. “You have a date with Prince Lucian Kiggs, if I recall.”

  “I had hoped for a music lesson,” I griped.

  “I can give you homework,” he said, infuriatingly oblivious to my dismay. “Stop by St. Gobnait’s and observe the new megaharmonium. They’ve just finished it, and I understand it puts into practice some intriguing acoustical principles, hitherto untested on so large a scale.”

  He tried to smile, to show me he was fine. Then he closed the door in my face.

  I strolled to the cathedral, as Orma suggested, having no desire to return to the palace yet. The sky had drawn a thin white veil across the sun, and the wind had picked up. Maybe snow would come soon; it was five days till Speculus, the longest night of the year. As the saying goes: when the days lengthen, the cold strengthens.

  The Countdown Clock was visible all the way across the cathedral square. Apparently it changed numbers midmorning, about the time Comonot would be arriving. I appreciated that kind of pedantry, and stopped to watch the mechanical figures emerge from little doors in its face. A bright green dragon and a purple-clad queen stepped forward, bowed, took turns chasing each other, and then hoisted a drapery between them, which I assumed represented the treaty. There was a grinding and clunking sound, and the massive clock hand pointed toward three.

  Three days. I wondered whether the Sons of St. Ogdo felt pressed for time. Was it difficult to organize rioting? Did they have enough torches and black feathers? Enough rabid speechifiers?

  I turned back toward St. Gobnait’s cathedral, feeling some curiosity about Viridius’s protégé. He had certainly made an interesting clock.

  I felt the megaharmonium before I heard it, through the soles of my feet, through the very street, experiencing it not as sound but as vibration and a peculiar oppressive weight of air. Closer to the cathedral, I understood a sound was present but would have been hard-pressed to identify it. I stood in the north transept porch, my hand upon a pillar, and I felt the megaharmonium to the center of my bones.

  It was loud. I did not yet feel qualified to offer a more nuanced opinion.

  I opened the door into the north transept; the music nearly blasted me back out again. The entire cathedral was packed with sound, every cranny, as if sound were some solid mass, leaving no air, no medium to move through. I could not enter until my ears adjusted, which they did surprisingly quickly.

  Once I had ceased to be terrified, I was awed. My paltry flute had made the building ring, but that thin sound had risen like candle smoke; this was a conflagration.

  I worked my way toward the Golden House at the great crossing, wading through sound, then pressed on into the south transept. I saw now that the instrument had four manual keyboards, gleaming like rows of teeth, and a larger one for the feet. Above, around, and behind it, pipes had been fitted in neat rows, making a palisade fortress of chanters; it looked like the unnatural offspring of a bagpipe and a … a dragon.

  A large man in black dominated the bench, his feet dancing a ground-bass jig, his broad shoulders affording him a reach like a Zibou rock ape. I wasn’t short but I could not have reached in so many directions at once without straining something.

  There was no music on the stand; surely no music had yet been written for this monstrosity. Was this cacophony his own composition? I suspected it was. It was brilliant, the way a thunderstorm across the moors or a raging torrent is brilliant, insofar as a force of nature may be said to have genius.

  I was judging too hastily. I began to hear structure in the piece, the longer I listened. The volume and intensity had distracted me from the melody itself, a fragile thing, almost shy. The surrounding bombast was all a bluff.

  He released the last chord like a boulder off a trebuchet. A bevy of monks who’d been hiding in nearby chapels like timid mice scurried out and accosted the performer in whispers: “Very nice. Glad it works. That’s enough testing; we’re about to have service.”

  “I couldt play durink service, yes?” said the big man in a dense Samsamese accent. His head, close-cropped and blond, bobbed submissively.

  “No. No. No.” The negative echoed all over the transept. The big man’s shoulders slumped; even from the back, he looked heartbroken. A pang of pity surprised me.

  Surely this was Viridius’s golden boy, Lars. He had designed an impressive machine, taking up an entire chapel with its pipes and tubes and bellows. I wondered which Saint had been evicted to make room for it.

  I should greet him. I felt I’d glimpsed his humanity, a piece of his heart in his playing. We were friends; he just didn’t know it yet. I stepped up and gently cleared my throat. He turned to look at me.

  His middling chin, round cheeks, and gray eyes shocked me speechless. It was Loud Lad, who piped and yodeled and built pergolas in the garden of my mind.

  “Hello,” I said calmly, my
pulse racing in excitement and plain terror. Would all my grotesques, the entire freakish diaspora of half-dragons, walk into my life one by one? Would I spot Gargoyella busking on a street corner and Finch in the palace kitchens, turning the spits? Maybe I wouldn’t have to go looking for them after all.

  Loud Lad gave courtesy with Samsamese simplicity, and said, “We hev not been introduced, grausleine.”

  I shook his enormous hand. “I’m Seraphina, Viridius’s new assistant.”

  He nodded eagerly. “I know. I am calledt Lurse.”

  Lars. He spoke Goreddi like his mouth was full of pebbles.

  He rose from his bench; he was taller than Orma, and as massive as two and a half Ormas, at least. He seemed simultaneously strong and soft, as if he had ended up with a lot of muscles rather by accident and didn’t care about keeping them. He had a nose like a compass needle; it pointed with purpose. He pointed it toward the quire, where the monks had begun cheerful hymns to St. Gobnait and her blessed bees. “They are havink service. Perheps we can …” He gestured past the Golden House, toward the north transept. I followed him out, into the hazy glare of afternoon.

  We walked to the Wolfstoot Bridge, a shy silence hanging over us. “Would you like lunch?” I said, gesturing toward the clustered food carts. He said nothing, but stepped up eagerly. I bought us pies and ale; we carried them to the bridge’s balustrade.

  Lars hefted himself up with unexpected grace and sat on the balustrade with his long legs dangling over the river. Like all proper Samsamese, he dressed gloomily: black doublet, jerkin, and joined hose. No ruffs or lace, no slashing or puffy trunk hose here. His boots looked like he’d owned them a long time and could not bear to give them up.

  He swallowed a bite of pie and sighed. “I hev needt to speak with you, grausleine. I heardt you at the funeral and knew you were my …”

  He trailed off; I waited, filled with curiosity and dread.

  River gulls circled, waiting for us to drop the smallest crumb. Lars threw bits of pie crust over the river; the gulls swooped and caught them in midair. “I start over,” he said. “Hev you noticedt, perheps, thet an instrument can be like a voice? Thet you can tell who plays it just from listenink, without lookink?”