Part 23 (1/2)

He said: ”... time to mull it over, and I am no longer afraid. I am sickened that you inherited her collapsing house of deceit, and that instead of tearing it down, I sh.o.r.ed it up with more deceit. What price must be paid is mine to pay. If you are afraid on your own behalf, fair enough, but do not fear for me-”

Then he was shaking my shoulder lightly. ”Seraphina. We're home.”

I threw my arms around him. He lifted me down and led me through the lighted doorway.

The next morning, I lay a long time, staring at the ceiling of my old room, wondering whether I'd imagined most of what he'd said. That didn't sound like a conversation I could have had with my father, even if we'd both been drunk as lords.

The sun was obnoxiously bright and my mouth tasted like death, but I didn't feel bad otherwise. I peeked at my garden, which I'd neglected last night, but everyone was peaceful; even Fruit Bat was up a tree, not demanding my attention. I rose and dressed in an old gown I found in my wardrobe; the scarlet I'd arrived in was too fine for everyday. I descended to the kitchen. Laughter and the smell of morning bread drifted toward me up the corridor. I paused, my hand upon the kitchen door, discerning their voices one by one, dreading to step into that warm room and freeze it up.

I took a deep breath and opened the door. For the merest moment, before my presence was noticed, I drank in the cozy domestic scene: the roaring hearth, the three fine bluestone platters hung above the mantelpiece, little window altars to St. Loola and St. Yane and a new one to St. Abaster, hanging herbs and strings of onions. My stepmother, up to her elbows in the kneading trough, looked up at the sound of the door and paled. At the heavy kitchen table, Tessie and Jeanne, the twins, had been peeling apples; they froze, silent and staring, Tessie with a length of peel dangling from her mouth like a green tongue. My little half brothers, Paul and Ned, looked to their mother uncertainly.

I was a stranger in this family. I always had been.

Anne-Marie wiped her hands on her ap.r.o.n and tried to smile. ”Seraphina. Welcome. If you're looking for your father, he's already left for the palace.” Her brow crumpled in confusion. ”You came from there? You'd have pa.s.sed him on the way.”

I could not remember anyone meeting us at the door last night, now that I thought of it. Had my father sneaked me into the house and upstairs without telling her? That sounded more like Papa than a conversation about love, lies, and fear.

I tried to smile. It was an unspoken covenant with my stepmother: we both tried. ”I-in fact, I'm home to retrieve something. From my, uh, room. That I forgot to take with me, and need.”

Anne-Marie nodded eagerly. Yes, yes, good. The awkward stepdaughter was leaving soon. ”Please, go on up. This is still your house.”

I drifted back upstairs, lightly dazed, wis.h.i.+ng I had told her the truth, because what was I going to do for breakfast now? Astonis.h.i.+ngly, my coin purse had made the whole journey and wasn't languis.h.i.+ng on the floor of Millie's room. I'd buy myself a bun somewhere, or ... my heart leaped. I could see Orma! He had hoped I'd come see him today. That was a plan, at least. I would surprise Orma before he disappeared for good.

I pushed that latter thought aside.

I packed the scarlet gown carefully into a satchel and made up the bed. I could never fluff the tick like Anne-Marie; she was going to figure out that I'd slept here. Ah, well, let her. It was Papa's to explain.

Anne-Marie required no farewells. She knew what I was, and it seemed to put her at ease when I behaved like a thoughtless saar. I opened the front door ready to head into the snowy city when there came a pattering of slippered feet behind me. I turned to see my half sisters rus.h.i.+ng up. ”Did you find what you came for?” asked Jeanne, her pale brow wrinkled in concern. ”Because Papa said to give you this.”

Tessie brandished a long, slender box in one hand, a folded letter in the other.

”Thanks.” I put both in my satchel, suspecting I should view them in privacy.

They bit their lips in exactly the same way, even though they weren't identical. Jeanne's hair was the color of clover honey; Tessie had Papa's dark locks, like me. I said, ”You turn eleven in a few months, do you not? Would you-would you like to come see the palace for your birthday? If it's all right with your mother, I mean.”

They nodded, shy of me.

”All right then. I'll arrange it. You could meet the princesses.” They didn't answer, and I could think of nothing more to say. I'd tried. I waved a feeble farewell and fled through the snowy streets to my uncle's.

Orma's apartment was a single room above a mapmaker's, nearer to my father's house than St. Ida's, so I checked there first. Basind answered the door but had no idea where my uncle had gone. ”If I knew, I'd be there with him,” he explained, his voice like sand in my stockings. He gazed into s.p.a.ce, tugging a hangnail with his teeth, while I left a message. I had no confidence it would be delivered.

Anxiety hastened my feet toward St. Ida's.

The streets were jammed full of people out for the Golden Plays. I considered walking down by the river, which was less crowded, but I hadn't dressed warmly enough. The crush in the streets stopped the wind, at least. There were large charcoal braziers set every block or so to keep playgoers from freezing; I took advantage of these when I could wedge myself close enough.

I had not intended to watch the plays, but it was hard not to pause at the sight of a giant, fire-belching head of St. Vitt outside the Guild of Gla.s.sblowers' warehouse. A blazing tongue ten yards long roared forth; everyone shrieked. St. Vitt caught his own eyebrows on fire-unintentionally, but Heavens, was he fierce with his brow aflame!

”St. Vitt, snort and spit!” chanted the crowd.

St. Vitt had not been possessed of such draconian talents in life, of course. It was a metaphor for his fiery temper or for his judgment upon unbelievers. Or, as likely as not, somebody at the Guild of Gla.s.sblowers had awakened in the middle of the night with the most fantastic idea ever, never mind that it was theologically questionable.

The Golden Plays stretched the hagiographies all round because the fact was, no one really knew. The Lives of the Saints contained many contradictions; the psalter's poems made things no clearer, and then there was the statuary. St. Polypous in the Lives had three legs, for example, but country shrines showed as many as twenty. At our cathedral, St. Gobnait had a hive of blessed bees; at South Forkey, she was famously depicted as a bee, big as a cow, with a stinger as long as your forearm. My subst.i.tute patroness, St. Capiti, usually carried her severed head on a plate, but in some tales her head had tiny legs of its own and skittered around independently, scolding people.

Delving deeper into the truth, of course, my psalter had originally coughed up St. Yirtrudis. I had never seen her without her face blacked out or her head smashed to plaster dust, so surely she had been the most terrible Saint of all.

I kept moving, past St. Loola's apple and St. Kathanda's colossal merganser, past St. Ogdo slaying dragons and St. Yane getting up to his usual shenanigans, which often involved impregnating entire villages. I pa.s.sed vendors of chestnuts, pasties, and pie, which made my stomach rumble. I heard music ahead: syrinx, oud, and drum, a peculiarly Porphyrian combination. Above the heads of the crowd, I made out the upper stories of a pyramid of acrobats, Porphyrians, by the look of them, and ...

No, not acrobats. Pygegyria dancers. The one at the top looked like Fruit Bat.

I meant Abdo. Sweet St. Siucre. It was Abdo, in loose trousers of green sateen, his bare arms snaking sinuously against the winter sky.

He'd been here all along, trying to find me, and I'd been putting him off.

I was still staring at the dancers, openmouthed, when someone grabbed my arm. I startled and cried out.

”Hush. Walk,” muttered Orma's voice in my ear. ”I haven't much time. I gave Basind the slip; I'm not confident I can do it again. I suspect the emba.s.sy is paying him to watch me.”

He still held my arm; I covered his hand with my own. The crowd flowed around us like a river around an island. ”I learned something new about Imlann from one of my maternal memories,” I told him. ”Can we find a quieter place to talk?”

He dropped my arm and ducked up an alley; I followed him through a brick-walled maze of barrels and stacked firewood and up the steps of a little shrine to St. Clare. I balked when I saw her-thinking of Kiggs, feeling her dyspeptic glare as criticism-but I kissed my knuckle respectfully and focused on my uncle.

His false beard had gone missing or he hadn't bothered with it. He had deep creases beside his mouth, which made him look unexpectedly old. ”Quickly,” he said. ”If I hadn't spotted you, I'd have disappeared by now.”

I took a shaky breath; I'd come so close to missing him. ”Your sister once overheard Imlann consorting with a cabal of treasonous generals, about a dozen in all. One of them, General Akara, was instrumental in getting the Goreddi knights banished.”

”Akara is a familiar name,” said Orma. ”He was caught, but the Ardmagar had his brain pruned too close to the stem; he lost most of his ability to function.”

”Does the Queen know?” I asked, shocked. ”The knights were banished under false pretenses, but nothing has been done to correct this!”

My uncle shrugged. ”I doubt Comonot disapproved of that consequence.”

Alas, I believed that; Comonot's rules were applied inconsistently. I said, ”If the cabal could infiltrate the knights, they really could be anywhere.”

Orma stared at St. Clare, pondering. ”They couldn't be quite anywhere, not easily. There would be a danger of law-abiding dragons sniffing them out at court. They could count on there being no other dragons present among the knights.”

It hit me then, what Imlann might have been doing. ”What if your father has been observing the knights? He might have burned their barn and shown himself as a final a.s.sessment of their capabilities.”

”A final a.s.sessment?” Orma sat down impiously on the altar, deep in thought. ”Meaning Akara didn't just have the knights banished for vengeance? Meaning this cabal has been deliberately working toward the extinction of the dracomachia?”

There was one clear implication of this; we both knew what it was. My eyes asked the question, but Orma was already shaking his head in denial.

”The peace is not a ruse,” he said. ”It is not some ploy to lull Goredd into false complacency until such time as dragonkind regains a clear superiority of-”

”Of course not,” I said quickly. ”At least, Comonot did not intend it that way. I believe that, but is it possible that his generals only pretended to agree to it, all the while making St. Polypous's sign behind their backs-so to speak?”

Orma fingered the coins in the offering bowl on the altar, letting the copper pieces dribble through his fingers like water. ”Then they have gravely miscalculated,” he said. ”While they sat around waiting for the knights to grow old, a younger generation has been raised on peaceful ideals, scholars.h.i.+p, and cooperation.”

”What if the Ardmagar were dead? If whoever took his place wanted war? Would this cabal need you and your agemates? Couldn't they fight a war without you, especially if there were no dracomachia against them?”

Orma rattled coins in his hand and did not answer.