Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
Pandowdy paused and looked at the tiny people surrounding him, his aspect deeply weary. “I’m not carrying away all your problems, Seraphina,” he boomed. “Only the smallest. This”—he gestured to the armies around us—“is for you to sort out.”
“I understand,” I said, my voice sounding smaller in my own ears. I was fading back into my body; I struggled against it. “How do I maintain this fire?” I cried.
“No one can live like this all the time, inside out,” Pandowdy said over his mountainous shoulder. “It’s too much, even for me.”
“I don’t want to stop seeing!”
He laughed; the earth laughed under our feet. “You won’t. You’ll return to it, and you’ll measure the world by a different scale now. But you can’t stay. Release it, good heart. Give it back to the world. There will be more.”
He turned on his enormous heel, tearing a divot out of the pasture where he stood, and in four strides he was around the end of the city and heading north into the hills. He waded through the Queenswood, over the first of the foothills, and was gone.
I looked back at the conflagration called Abdo. We agreed without speaking and collapsed into ourselves again, the mind-fire exploding outward in a shock of rightness and love and memory. It rippled through the world in a great wave, rattling the bones of knowledge, shaking the heart of complacency, echoing in a hundred thousand skulls.
I found myself on my back in the dirt, sick and dizzy. I raised my head in time to see the gates of the city open and a golden-haired Queen on a red horse come galloping toward me through the crystalline sunlight.
And then there was, blissfully, nothing.
My first impression upon waking was that I had ended up in Heaven. I was cradled in a cloud. A sweet autumnal breeze wafted gauzy curtains like the gossamer wings of the blessed. Sunlight gilded all it touched; the Golden House was made of sun. Everything made sense now.
This was not my room, not any of my rooms. I raised my head with difficulty, for it was very heavy, and saw Kiggs sitting with his back to me, writing at a desk.
Oh, good—he was dead, too. It wasn’t just me.
“She stirs!” he cried, hearing my suspiration, or the clouds creaking under me. He rushed to my side, flopped onto the golden expanse of nebulous bed beside me, and lay propped up on his elbows. He pushed my hair (a storm cloud) out of my face. He smiled, and his eyes were stars.
“Before you ask: you’ve been out a whole day.” He rested his chin in his hand, pressing at his cheek as if to stop himself from foolishly grinning. He couldn’t stop. He gave it up. “I was worried,” he said. “We all were. There was this giant Saint, and fire, and you were …” He spread his hands as if trying to encompass the unfathomable scale of it. “How did you do all that?”
I shook my head, which was full of suns, flashing and jangling and making it hard to answer. Maybe this wasn’t Heaven, but I was no longer of this world. Or else I was the world. Maybe the distinction was pointless.
I closed my eyes to quiet the intensity around me. The world was no longer on fire, but there was an echo of fire in everything. A memory of fire. It was still too much. I felt everything.
“The war …,” I began in a voice like autumn leaves.
“Peace has broken out,” Kiggs proclaimed. “Glisselda has negotiated terms with all sides. The Regent of Samsam is heading home, tail between his legs; the Loyalists and the Old Ard are still here, patching broken wings and shattered trust, but they’ll soon depart as well. General Zira reports that Comonot muscled through in the Kerama, but we don’t have all the details yet.”
Kiggs leaned in until I could feel his breath in my ear. “When St. Pandowdy picked Jannoula up, I felt it. Like sorrow or release, or like I loved her for just a moment and wanted her to be well. I wanted the world to be well. It was the most extraordinary thing. And then before you collapsed, it came over me again, this burst of … what?”
He was incandescent even with my eyes closed, too bright to look at. I reached out and touched his face. He took my hand and kissed the palm.
I gasped. I was like an open wound; I felt everything tenfold.
“I don’t know what to call any of it,” I said, trying to catch my breath.
He laughed, like sunlight on water. “Jannoula glowed, but then St. Pandowdy—and you—”
“And Abdo,” I said. He would not have known he was seeing Abdo.
Kiggs would insist on asking me to answer the unanswerable. “I want to understand what I saw. I want to know—”
“If I’m a Saint?” I asked.
He said softly, “That wasn’t my question, no, but feel free to answer that.”
I squeezed my eyes more tightly shut. I had been waking slowly into myself again, but that question accelerated the process, made me harshly aware of my physical form. My sleep chemise—who’d dressed me?—was stiff and my scales itchy; I had blisters between my toes; my mouth was unpleasantly dry, and I could really have stood a trip to the garderobe. Every prosaic ache and quirk and failing rushed to my notice at once. I put a hand over my eyes. “Pandowdy may be a Saint, whatever else is true.”
“Agreed,” said Kiggs.
“I saw everything, Kiggs. I held the whole world in my mind at once”—I didn’t hold it now; I could feel it still trickling away—“but don’t … I can’t call myself a Saint.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “Maybe that question isn’t for you to answer.”
I rolled onto my side, facing him, still not opening my eyes. “But there was something … extraordinary. I was more than me, and the world was more than the world. How do I reconcile myself with that, Kiggs?” I asked, my voice cracking under the weight of new distress.
“With what, love?” he asked.
I took his face in my hands; it was terribly urgent that he understand. “How am I to fit back into myself after this?”
He laughed softly. “Haven’t you always been more than yourself? Haven’t we all? We are none of us just one thing.”
He was right, of course. I opened my eyes at last and examined the beautiful surface of him. His teeth were slightly crooked; that was the only difference between them and diamonds.
His face was too smooth. “You disappeared your beard,” I muttered.
His brows arched in surprise. “So you did like it. Glisselda didn’t see how that was possible.”
“Glisselda!” I said, pulling my hands away from his face. “How is she?”
He nodded, firmly affirmative. “She’s Queen,” he said wryly, “and then some. Like none we have ever witnessed before.” He smiled. “She and I have talked, and confessed our hearts’ transgressions, and I believe we understand each other. What’s left to say should perhaps be said with you present, as it pertains to you also.”
My head lolled toward him, then sank deep into a pillow. He lay his head beside mine and brushed my cheek with a finger. I rippled like the ocean.
“All will be well,” he said.
He was right; I had seen it. All was well—or could be, if we worked to make it so. We were the fingers of the world, putting itself to rights.
I had no chance to explain this because he kissed me.
Who can say how long that lasted? I had learned to step outside of time.
By evening I had ebbed entirely into myself again. Life still glowed around me—the ityasaari blazed like torches—but I no longer saw everything at once. No one can live like this all the time, Pandowdy had said. It was a relief in a way. There were mundane things that needed my attention.
We ityasaari sat up with St. Eustace for Nedouard that night. A private wake at the seminary was followed by his interment beneath St. Gobnait’s at dawn. Only the ityasaari, Prince Lucian Kiggs, and Queen Glisselda attended; he’d had no family in Ninys to track down.
Dame Okra Carmine, his ambassadress, made sure he had the proper Ninysh touches: spruce wreaths at his head and feet, pine-flavored pastries, and sweet Segoshi raisin wine. She wept harder th
Nedouard was interred in a wall niche in the cathedral’s catacombs. I wept for the kindly, unfortunate doctor. He’d asked me a question once: Are we irretrievably broken? I hadn’t known the answer, but I thought I knew it now. After most of the others had filed out of the crypt, I whispered to his grave plaque: “Never beyond repair, good heart.”
Blanche, kneeling in prayer nearby, heard me. She stood, brushing the dust of centuries off her dark blue gown (we were none of us wearing white, I noticed, though this was a funeral). She took my arm and silently accompanied me out of the catacombs.
We caught up with the others climbing the hill to Castle Orison. A quilt of cloud shrouded the sun, and the breeze blew chill; the rains of late autumn would set in soon. As we trudged along, an unexpected shouting arose behind us, a voice that was simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar: “Phina! Prince Lucian!”
The street was full of people following us while trying to appear like they weren’t. Kiggs stepped up beside me and pointed. “That’s not … is it?”
“It is!” came another shout. Abdo ducked out from behind a cartload of firewood and charged up the hill toward us.
“You can hear him?” I asked Kiggs.
“How can I not? He’s shouting.”
“And I will shout again!” cried Abdo. “I can’t stop shouting!”
He was completely filthy, as befitted a lad who’d spent weeks camping out in a shrine and trekking across swampland. His hair was tangled, full of moss and twigs. The cleanest thing about him was his grin, which was enormous and gleamed like the moon.
“Hello, everyone!” he shouted without moving his lips. The other half-dragons’ mouths already hung open; there were only eyes left to bug out, which they did alarmingly.
“How are you doing thet?” said Lars.
Abdo did a little waggling dance, sticking his tongue out and making antlers of his hands, the whole and the broken. “I figured it out! My mind is as large as the entire world. I could speak to everyone at once, if I wished. It’s not talking, exactly, but it sounds the same, doesn’t it?”
He was using his mind-fire—the way everyone had heard me say Pandowdy’s name—to make a sound heard with the ears and the mind and the heart all at once.
Lars said, “It wouldt be less eerie if you move your lips and pretendt the sound comes from your face.”
“Oh!” said Abdo, contorting his lips. “I’m out of practice.”
He was moving his mouth in the wrong ways at the wrong time, clearly faking. It was hard to watch. “You could practice in front of the glass,” I suggested.
He shrugged, grinning, too delighted with himself to take it as criticism. He bounced around us, greeting each half-dragon in turn. He hugged Camba, in her wheeled chair, and laughed when she told him he needed a bath. Blanche, who still clung to my arm, watched him in wonderment, a smile slowly creeping across her lips.
The ityasaari did not care to spend one more night in the Garden of the Blessed, and neither did I. I had everything moved back to my old suite as soon as possible.
Blanche, Od Fredricka, and Gianni Patto took up residence at Dame Okra’s large ambassadorial residence in town while she made arrangements for them to return to Ninys. “They’re going to need protections and assurances, to say nothing of support,” she explained, bustling about officiously, when I visited her at home. “Count Pesavolta isn’t certain he wants them, said they’re ‘disruptive’ and ‘polarizing.’ Well, I expect I can hammer some certainty into him.”
“They’re welcome to remain in Goredd,” I said. “The Queen said—”
“I know,” she said, her froggy face puckering sadly. “But you must understand, now they associate Goredd with … well, with that time. You can’t blame them.”
I didn’t, but I wished things were different.
Lars stayed at the palace for now, although he did not return to Viridius. The old man used me as a go-between. I told Lars that Viridius forgave him and wanted him back, but Lars just smiled sadly and said, “I cannot yet forgive myself.” He drifted through the palace like a ghost.
News reached us that Porphyry had dissuaded further Samsamese aggression with a decisive naval victory. The Porphyrian ityasaari wanted to set out for home before winter made the roads difficult. Gaios, Gelina, and Mina spoke of taking off on new journeys after escorting the others back. They were only waiting for Camba and Pende to be well enough to travel.
Camba was healing; she began to take her first hobbling steps around the palace gardens with a cane. Pende, alas, was not so fortunate. I had been hoping against all reason that Jannoula’s departure might bring about some kind of recovery for the old priest, but he still lay inertly, his condition unchanged.
Ingar brought him outside into the wan autumn sunshine to watch Camba practice walking. The old man stared at nothing, his wattled chin sunk to his chest.
I was helping Camba keep her balance while Ingar adjusted Pende’s lap blanket. “I feel terrible about Paulos Pende,” I said quietly, adjusting my arm around Camba’s waist. “If I could have unbound myself sooner, maybe—”
“I also tend to blame myself first,” said Camba. Her head was still shaved for mourning, though she’d rehung her golden earrings. “The world is seldom so simple that it hinges on us alone. Pende played his own part. He told you your mind was bound and that it was a problem, but did he make even the slightest attempt to help you?”
“He doesn’t deserve this,” I said, unsure where her argument was leading.
“Of course not,” said Camba. “And neither do you deserve all the blame. Sometimes everyone does their best and things still end up wrong.”
While I considered this, Ingar approached us, smiling widely. I ceded my place to him. “I think we can keep the old man comfortable as we travel,” said Ingar. “There are carriages designed for invalids, with good springs so they don’t jostle too much. I’ll take Phloxia to procure one; if there was ever anyone born to deal with merchants, it’s her.”
I noticed the pronouns. “You’re going back to Porphyry, Ingar?”
“I didn’t get enough time at the library,” he said, kissing Camba on the cheek. Camba kissed his bald head.
“Your own library is here now,” I said, surprised that I wanted him to stay.
His eyes softened apologetically. “I’ve read all the books in my library.”
“Of course,” I said. “How silly of me.”
I embraced them both together. Camba held on to me for a long time.
“You will come to us in Porphyry again,” she said. “There will always be a place for you in our garden.”
“Thank you, sister,” I said, my voice constricting.
The Porphyrians were ready to leave within three days. It hurt to let them go, but it hurt the most with Abdo.
The boy, bless him, had not stopped talking since he arrived, but at least he’d finally worked out how to whisper. It hadn’t been trivial; he could broadcast his voice to the entire city if he wished. We had all been subjected to random bursts of Abdo’s spooky, disembodied voice. Speaking softly, or to just a few people at once, took more finesse.
On Abdo’s last evening, I joined him, Kiggs, and Selda in a small parlor in the royal family’s wing of the palace. Abdo seemed finally to have realized he was leaving, and was quieter than usual. “You’re welcome to stay,” said the Queen gently. “We have plenty of good uses we could put you to. Maybe even devious uses.”
Abdo shook his head. “I have to get home.” He looked at his fingers, the strong and the still, twisting in his lap. “I need to make up with my mother. When I saw …” He paused, as if looking for the words. “What was it like for you, Phina, when you opened your mind wide and saw everything?”
Blood rose to my cheeks. I hadn’t discussed it, except for what I’d told Kiggs (which seemed a bit
Glisselda’s gaze grew distant, as if she were trying to picture it; Kiggs leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and asked, “Was it Heaven?”
That question took me aback, but Abdo answered it: “That’s how your Saints interpreted it. It looked like our gods, to me—not literally, not the way they’re depicted in statues, but the vibrant space between them, where Necessity is Chance and Chance flows into Necessity. The world is as it must be, and as it happens to be, and those are the same thing, connected and right, and you understand and love all of it, because you are all of it and all of it is you.”
“In love with all the world,” said Kiggs, quoting Pontheus.
That was exactly what I’d felt—it almost brought tears to my eyes to remember—but Abdo’s eloquent explanation still didn’t capture it. You couldn’t put words on something like that. Heaven, gods—these were concepts far too small.
I said, “So what happens when you make up with your priestess mother? Will you join the temple you once scorned?” It sounded harsh when I said it aloud, but I did not see how Abdo was going to fit everything he had experienced into the confines of a temple.
But then, I was managing to fit into myself.
“Something like that,” Abdo said, smiling.
“I think that’s very admirable,” said Glisselda, raising her chin and giving me a stern look. “If your priesthood is anything like ours, Abdo, they need good-hearted people like you. You’re going to help your city.”
I couldn’t tell whether I thought that was a bad idea or whether I was just going to miss him terribly.
Abdo took his leave soon after, bowing to Glisselda and shaking Kiggs’s hand. They wished him a safe journey. When he came to say goodbye to me, tears welled in my eyes. I hugged him a long time in silence, and he said to my mind alone: I won’t be far from you, Phina madamina. You don’t go through what we’ve been through together and not leave some of yourself behind.