Seraphina: Chapters 14–23

Finally his phlegmatic manservant, Marius, crept up with a message for me: “The master’s not here.”

He gaped vapidly at a nearby table full of quigs.

They collected it in their mouths, masticated it, and spit molten globs, hissing, into a glass of beer.

Orma had described his father’s saarantras so vaguely that I did not expect the wealth of detail he gave me now: the sheen of Imlann’s skin (different in moonlight), how sharp he habitually kept his talons, the precise shape and color of his eyes (different when he pulled his third eyelid across), the curl of horn and fold of wings (delineated with mathematical precision), the spiciness of his brimstone breath, his tendency to feint left and strike right, the width of the sinews at his heels.

From my perch in the gallery, I saw that Count Pesavolta of Ninys and the Regent of Samsam had each colonized a quarter of the room, the former flamboyant and noisy, the latter dour and severe.

I shook all over, filled with a rancorous cacophony of emotions: fear, anger, disgust.

Comonot had proceeded no further up the carpet toward the dais.

But let me warn you, all of you, from the newskin on his first trip south to the venerable teacher who has flown into the macrocloud of unvigilance: there is danger in humanity.

My musicians hovered solicitously, as if uncertain what I required.

Grandmother met with Ambassador Fulda before he left, apprising him of the ‘rumor.’

She’s staked her entire reign upon the idea that we can trust dragons, and she refuses to consider the possibility of an unauthorized dragon loose in the countryside—to say nothing of killing Uncle Rufus—without an awful lot of unambiguous proof.

The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you.

The brawling pipes sprang back to cacophonous life, but there was a smattering of laughter and applause, as if his statement had lent the performance some humor or at least some sense.

I balked. Showing Dame Okra hadn’t turned out like I expected; I had no idea how Lars would react.

“We Samsamese—those of us who take our faith to heart—don’t imbibe the devil’s drink,” he snapped at the hapless serving lad.

I dove back into the crowd, shouldering my way through forests of gossamer veils and ermine-edged houppelandes until I was halfway around the hall.

“He’s making life difficult for Viridius’s piper. I caught him lambasting the poor fellow back in the dressing rooms.”

My mouth opened, but my torpid brain had not formed any words for it to say.

“You’re worried that it’s improper, the pair of us riding off unescorted. I don’t see a problem. A larger party would put the knights on the defensive before we even arrived, and as for propriety, well. My fiancée isn’t worried, my grandmother won’t mind, Lady Corongi will be off visiting her sick cousin for the next couple days, and I see no one else of consequence likely to judge us.”

“He was asking for you last night after you absconded,” said Kiggs as I drew near.

He sat lightly in the saddle, and his horse seemed to respond to his very thoughts; there was none of this unseemly yanking of reins that I was forced to do.

“What if the dragon was there? Maybe it left some, uh, carrion,” I said, wincing at my own feebleness.

“Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.”

We pressed on harder after that, ostensibly to make up lost time, an unspoken anxiety hanging over us at how close we might have been.

We passed fallow winter fields and brown grazing pastures.

I know you’re of age to decide for yourself—‘an autonomous being, unfettered and free, stepping up to the first agon of your heart’—

Their hide is tough but it burns, given enough heat for enough time; their insides are volatile, which is how they flame in the first place.

I had considered her short-range prognostication talent a bit silly; I was wrong.

“And you’re engaged, anyway,” I added, trying to sound flippant because I feared he might hear my heart beating, it was pounding so violently.

It was easy to think of dragons as feral file clerks when there wasn’t an enormous, choleric specimen snorting sulfur in your face.

Kiggs, of course, had drawn his sword again, but it hung from his hand in a desultory manner. It had been useless against one dragon; it was merely token resistance against two.

I should rejoice in these obstacles; they had saved me from abject humiliation.

For one moment—a moment transfixed in my obstinate memory—he had loved me too.

“I elect to waive your penalties,” said Comonot, glancing sidelong at the Queen as if to gauge her reaction to his magnanimity.

A shimmering being, pearly and opalescent, brushed past me imperiously: Princess Glisselda.

A shimmering being, pearly and opalescent, brushed past me imperiously: Princess Glisselda.

I sat bolt upright, or tried to; the morass of my feather mattress pulled me back down as if the bed tick were trying to eat me.

The cave is too tight to turn around in—I am not as lithe and serpentine as some—so I back out, step by step, up the slick passage.

My father bites my tail on the pretext of pulling me out, then bites me again, behind the head, in chastisement.

That is the least of it; my own father is part of a treacherous cabal, plotting against our Ardmagar.