"Forgive me, Prince-"
"Kiggs. Please," he said. "I"ve been angry with myself as well. I behaved rather foolishly after our encounter with Imlann, as if I could blithely disregard my obligations and-"
"No," I said, shaking my head a bit too vehemently. "Not at all. People do strange things when they"re terrified. I hadn"t given it a second thought."
"Ah. It is a great relief to hear you say that." He didn"t look relieved. "Please know I consider myself your friend, what b.u.mps we have encountered upon that road notwithstanding. The heart of you is good. You"re an intelligent and fearless investigator, and a good teacher too, I hear. Glisselda swears she couldn"t do without you. We want you to stay."
He still had hold of my arm. I extricated myself gently and let him take me home.
The sky was just growing dark when our carriage rolled into Stone Court. Princess Glisselda waited to meet us; she fussed over me and fussed at Kiggs for letting me get hurt once again, as if protecting me ought to have been his priority when the entire city was up in arms. Kiggs smiled at what a little mother hen she was. Glisselda placed herself firmly between us, giving an arm to each, chattering away as was her wont. I pleaded abject tiredness and broke up our little trio at the earliest opportunity.
I was exhausted, though it was not yet five o"clock. I trudged up to my room and threw myself into a chair, letting my satchel drop to the floor between my feet.
I could not continue living in such close proximity to Kiggs if it was always going to hurt this much. I would stay through Treaty Eve, tomorrow night, and then I would give Viridius my notice. Maybe not, even. I would simply disappear, run off to Blystane or Porphyry or Segosh, one of the big cities, where I could disappear into the crowds and never be seen again.
My left wrist itched under its bandage. I just wanted to look at the scale scab, I told myself. See how it was getting on. I began unfastening the bandage, pulling at it with my teeth when it was difficult to undo.
There was, indeed, a crusted scab where the scale had been; it squatted malevolently among smooth silver scales to either side. I ran a finger over it; it felt rough and sore. Compared with that fat black scab, the scales were not so ugly. Trust me to turn my native hideousness into something even more hideous. I hated that scab. I pried up an edge, then had to look away, gritting my teeth and cringing with revulsion.
Still, I did not intend to stop until I had torn a hole in myself again.
The satchel at my feet fell open. I must have kicked it. Out of the bag fell the long, slender box and the letter, which just this morning-it seemed longer ago than that-my sisters had handed me on my father"s behalf. I backed off my wrist for the moment and took up the box. My heart pounded painfully; the box was the right size and shape to contain a specific musical instrument. I wasn"t sure I could stand the heartbreak if it didn"t.
I fetched the letter and opened it first.
My daughter, I suspect you will remember little of our conversation last night, which is just as well. I fear I babbled on foolishly. However: I owe you this, at least. Your mother had more than one flute, or I could never have borne breaking the other. I still regret that, not least for your look of betrayal. I was the monster in our household, not you.
What comes, comes. I have made my peace with the past and with the future. Do what you feel you must, and do not be afraid.
All my love, for good or ill, Papa With shaking hands I opened the wooden case. Inside, wrapped in a long strip of saffron fabric, was a flute of polished ebony, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl. It took my breath away; I knew it at once for hers.
I put it to my lips and played a scale, smooth as water. Both my wrists twinged painfully as my fingers moved. I took the saffron strip and wound it around my scabby left wrist. It came from both my parents. Let it remind me I was not alone, and protect me from myself.
I rose renewed, and headed for the door. There was work yet to be done, and I was the only one who could do it.
Comonot was important enough that he had been given a room in the royal family"s private wing, the most luxurious and heavily guarded part of the palace. As I approached the guard station, my stomach fluttered anxiously. I had no clear plan for how to bluff this time, no lie I could tell them. I would ask to be allowed through to see the Ardmagar, and see what happened.
I nearly balked when I recognized Mikey the Fish, one of the guards from before, but I gripped my saffron-bound wrist, lifted my chin, and stepped up to him anyway. "I need to speak with the Ardmagar," I said. "How do I go about doing that?"
Mikey the Fish actually smiled at me. "You follow me, Music Mistress," he said, opening the heavy double doors for me and nodding to his fellows.
He escorted me into the forbidden residential area. Bright tapestries lined the corridor walls, punctuated by marble statues, portraits, and pedestals supporting fine porcelain and fragile spun gla.s.s. The Queen was known for loving art; apparently this was where she kept it. I scarcely dared breathe lest I knock something over.
"Here"s his suite," said Mikey, turning to go. "Watch yourself-Princess Dionne claims the old saar made a pa.s.s at her."
I found that distressingly easy to believe. I watched the guard retreat down the hall and noted that he did not turn back toward his post but went deeper into the residence. He"d been told to let me in, and was off to report that I"d arrived. Well, I would not question my good fortune. I knocked on Comonot"s door.
The Ardmagar"s servant-a human lad, a.s.signed to him from among the castle page boys-answered the door at once, making a very peculiar face at the sight of me. Someone else had been expected, evidently.
"Is that my dinner? Bring it through," said the Ardmagar from the other room.
"It"s some woman, Your Excellence!" cried the boy as I stepped past him into what was evidently the study. The boy yapped at my heels like a terrier: "You"re not to enter unless the Ardmagar says you may!"
Comonot had been writing at a wide desk; he rose at the sight of me and stared, speechless. I gave him full courtesy. "Forgive me, sir, but I was not finished talking to you earlier, when we were so rudely interrupted by your would-be a.s.sa.s.sin."
He narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "Is this about that cabal theory of yours?"
"You disregarded the message out of disgust for the messenger."
"Sit down, Seraphina," he said, gesturing toward an upholstered chair carved with curlicues and embroidered with elegant, improbable foliage. His room was all velvet brocade and rich dark oak; the very ceiling had large carved pinecones protruding from the center of every coffer, like some giant"s scaly fingertips. This wing of the palace maintained a more elaborate standard of decor than my own.
He"d had time to sober up since our talk in the bishop"s library, and he now held me in a gaze as piercing as Orma"s. He seated himself across from me, thoughtfully running his tongue over his teeth.
"You must think me a superst.i.tious fool," he said, tucking his hands into the voluminous sleeves of his embroidered houppelande.
I needed more information before I could reply; it was possible I did.
"I admit," he said, "I have been. You are something that should not be. Dragons have difficulty with counterfactuals."
I almost laughed. "How can I be counterfactual? I"m right here."
"If you were a ghost claiming the same, should I believe you? Should I not rather consider you a symptom of my own madness? You showed me, at the cathedral, that you have some substance. I wish to understand the nature of that substance."
"All right," I said, with some apprehension.
"You have a foot in both worlds: if you have maternal memories, you"ve seen what it is to be a dragon, contrasted with what it"s like to be a saarantras, contrasted yet again with what it"s like to be human-or nearly so."
This I was prepared to handle. "I have experienced those states, yes."
He leaned forward. "And what do you think of being a dragon?"
"I-I find it unpleasant, frankly. And confusing."
"Do you? Maybe that"s not unexpected. It"s very different."
"I tire of the incessant wind-vector calculations, and the stench of the entire world."
He tented his fat fingers and studied my face. "But you have some understanding, perhaps, of how alien this shape is to us. The world around looks different; we easily get lost, both inside ourselves and out. If I as saarantras react differently than I as dragon would react, then who am I now, really?
"Do I love you?" he asked. "It occurs to me that one possible motive for defending you would be love. Only I"m not sure what that one"s like. I have no way to measure it."
"You don"t love me," I said flatly.
"But maybe I did for just a moment? No?"
"No."
He had withdrawn his arm from his sleeve entirely; his hand emerged from the neck hole of his houppelande and scratched his jowly chin. I stared, astonished by this maneuver. He said, "Love requires extreme correction. It"s the emotional state we teach our students to guard against most carefully. It presents an actual danger to a saar because, you see, our scholars who fall in love don"t want to come back. They don"t want to be dragons anymore."
"Like my mother," I said, crossing my arms tightly.
"Exactly!" he cried, insensible of the fact that I might take offense at his tone. "My government has clamped down on all hyperemotionality, but especially love, and it is right that we have done so. But being here, being this, I find myself curious to feel everything, once. They"ll mop up my mind when I get home-I won"t lose myself to it-but I want to measure this danger, stare right into the fearsome jaws of love, survive its deadly blast, and find better ways to treat others who suffer this malady."
I almost laughed. As much heartache as I"d already endured over Kiggs, I could not disagree with the words fearsome or malady, but I couldn"t let him think I approved of his plan, either. "If you ever do experience love, I hope it generates some sympathy for the heartbreaking, impossible choices my mother had to make alone, between her people and the man she loved, between her child and her very life!"
Comonot bugged his eyes at me. "She chose wrongly on both counts."
He was making me angry. Unfortunately, I had come here for a specific purpose I had not yet achieved. "General, about the cabal-"
"Your obsession?" He replaced his arm in his sleeve and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. "Yes, while we"re contemplating counterfactuals, let us consider this. If you learned of some cabal from a maternal memory, then the information is nearly twenty years old. How do you know they haven"t been caught and disbanded?"
I folded my hands tightly, trying to contain my irritation. "You could tell me easily enough."
He tugged an earring. "How do you know they didn"t disband themselves when Imlann was banished?"
"Imlann still appears to be pursuing their purpose, as if he believes they still exist," I said. "They had the knights banished; he"s checking up on whether the dracomachia is sufficiently dead. If it is, they find a way to gain power. Having you a.s.sa.s.sinated would do, or perhaps they"re leading a coup in the Tanamoot right now."
Comonot waved me off; the rings on his thick fingers glinted. "I"d have heard word of a coup. Imlann could be working alone; he is delusional enough to believe others are with him. And if a cabal wished me dead, could they not kill me more easily while I was in the Tanamoot?"
"That would only gain them a civil war; they want Goredd dragged into it," I said.
"This is far too speculative," he said. "Even if a few disgruntled generals were plotting against me, my loyal generals-to say nothing of the younger generation, who have benefited most directly from the peace-would quickly subdue any uprising."
"There was just an attempt on your life!" I cried.
"Which we foiled. It"s over." He removed one of his rings and replaced it absently, thinking. "Prince Lucian said the man was one of the Sons of St. Ogdo. I cannot imagine the Sons collaborating with a dragon cabal, can you? What kind of dragon would think it a viable option to make use of them?"
A fiendishly clever dragon, I suddenly realized. If the Sons started a.s.sa.s.sinating people, the Queen would be forced to crack down on them. Imlann would have his dirty work done for him by anti-dragon zealots, and then have his anti-dragon zealot problem quashed by the Crown-all while he watched and waited like the reptile he was.
"Ardmagar," I said, rising. "I must bid you good evening."
He narrowed his eyes. "I haven"t convinced you you"re wrong, and you"re too stubborn to give this up. What do you intend?"
"To talk to someone who will listen," I said, "and who, when faced with something previously thought to be counterfactual, adapts his philosophies to reality and not the other way around."
I walked out. He made no attempt to stop me.
Kiggs waited in the corridor, leaning against the opposite wall, a little book in his hand. He snapped it shut at the sight of me and tucked it away in his scarlet doublet.
"Am I that predictable?" I said.
"Only when you do exactly what I would have done."
"Thank you for telling the guards to let me pa.s.s. It saved a lot of embarra.s.sment on both sides."
He bowed, a more exaggerated courtesy than I deserved. "Selda thinks I ought to ask you, one more time, what the pair of you could possibly have to discuss. I promised I would, though I expect-"
"I was just coming to find you both. There are things I should have told you that I ... I haven"t," I said. "I"m sorry for it. But let"s find your cousin first; she needs to hear this too."
He looked as if he weren"t certain whether to trust my sudden willingness to talk. I"d earned this skepticism; even now, I had no intention of telling the truth about myself. I sighed, but tried to smile at him. He escorted me toward the Blue Salon.
Glisselda spotted us at once across the sparkly crush of courtiers; she smiled, but something in our expressions rapidly changed hers to quizzical. "Excuse us," she said to the bevy of gentlemen surrounding her. "Important affairs of state, you know."
She rose imperiously and led us into a little side room furnished with a lone Porphyrian couch; she closed the door and gestured for us to be seated. "What"s the latest from the city?" she asked.
"Curfew. Lockdown," said Kiggs, seating himself gingerly, as if he had an old man"s aches and pains. "I"m not looking forward to tomorrow if news spreads that Comonot killed a citizen in the cathedral-never mind that it was self-defense."
"You can"t suppress that information?" I asked, lingering near the door, not wanting to sit beside him, not knowing what to do with myself if I didn"t sit down.
"We"re trying," he snapped, "but the citizenry found out about Imlann and the pet.i.t ard awfully fast. The palace is full of leaks, apparently."
I had an idea who one leak might be. I said, "I have a lot to tell you both."
Glisselda grabbed my arm and wedged me onto the couch between her and Kiggs, smiling as if we were the happiest, coziest grouping ever conceived. "Speak, Phina."
I took a deep breath. "Before Comonot was attacked, I saw the Earl of Apsig at the cathedral speaking with a hooded priest who I believe was Thomas Broadwick," I began.
"You believe," said Kiggs, shifting in his seat, his very posture skeptical. "Meaning you"re not completely certain. I don"t suppose you heard what was said?"
"I also saw Josef in town earlier, reciting St. Ogdo"s Malediction with a group of the Sons," I continued stubbornly.
"If he"s joined the Sons, that"s serious," said Kiggs, "but here"s the hole in your reasoning: either he"s a Son of St. Ogdo or he"s a dragon. You can"t have it both ways."
Thanks to my conversation with Comonot, I was ready for this argument. I explained how fiendishly clever it was to get the Sons involved, adding, "Orma said Imlann would be where we least expect. Where less than with the Sons?"
"I still don"t see how it would be possible for a dragon to live here at court-for more than two years-and not be sniffed out by other dragons," said Kiggs.
"Obviously he pretends to despise them so that he can quit the room whenever they enter," said Glisselda.
"He could mask his scent with perfume easily enough," I said, feeling miserable. Here I was, monstrous and wedged in between the pair of them, and they had no idea. I squeezed my hands between my knees to keep myself from fingering my wrist. "But listen," I said. "There"s more."
I explained what I suspected about Imlann and the cabal, simply omitting my maternal memory: that Imlann was here to determine how dysfunctional the dracomachia had become, and that the cabal surely had an interest in seeing Comonot dead. "Maybe it"s over, maybe that one attempt was their best, but I don"t think we can chance it. I think they"ll try again."
" "They" being whom?" asked Kiggs. "This cabal you"ve suddenly pulled out of thin air? The Sons? Imlann, in a mysterious new plurality?"
"Lucian, stop being a pedant," said Glisselda, putting an arm around me.
I continued. "Much of this is extrapolation, but it would be unwise to ignore the possibility-"
"Extrapolation from what?" said Kiggs. Glisselda reached around behind me and smacked the side of his head. "What? It"s an important question! What"s the source of this information, and how reliable is it?"
The princess lifted her chin defiantly. "Phina is the source, and Phina is reliable."
He didn"t argue, although he squirmed, clearly wanting to.
"I would tell you if I could," I said. "But I have obligations of my own, and-"
"My first obligation is the truth," he said bitterly. "Always."