Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman
“Murder?” I asked, alarmed.
“I forget that things happen here that you don’t hear about,” said Glisselda. “Comonot established a dragon garrison shortly after you left. He called it ‘a large gesture of good faith.’ He said that several times, in case there was any mistaking.”
I was glad he’d taken my advice and unsurprised by the ham-handed execution.
“It’s gone over badly,” said Kiggs. “The Sons of St. Ogdo are crawling out of their ratholes again. Protests, mostly, but also one violent riot, saarantrai assaulted, and a female dragon officer missing. We found her burned body in a warehouse by the river.”
I closed my eyes, sickened. The Sons of St. Ogdo were a clandestine brotherhood of fanatical dragon-haters. Half the trouble at midwinter had been their fault; they so despised dragonkind that they were easily persuaded—by the dragon Imlann, in human form—to participate in the assassination attempts against Comonot. Lars’s estranged brother, Josef, Earl of Apsig, had been in the thick of things; he’d returned to Samsam in the end, tail between his legs, humiliated to learn he’d done the bidding of a dragon.
“His large gesture of good faith has been a large headache for the city watch,” said Kiggs.
“He meant well,” said Glisselda. It was the first time I’d heard her defend Comonot’s clumsy efforts. “Anyway, the Sons of St. Ogdo won’t get away with murdering saarantrai. You know what a dogged investigator Lucian is. We’ll take whatever steps are necessary to keep the peace.”
“Comonot’s Loyalists are our allies: that’s the reality,” said Kiggs. “Goredd must learn to adjust.”
“Of course,” I said weakly. “I know you have it well in hand.”
When our conversation finished, however, I lay on the bed a long time with my arm over my eyes, feeling dully disappointed. I don’t know what I had imagined would happen in Goredd after I told the truth about my origins and revealed my scales. Did I expect the Sons of St. Ogdo to dissolve into dust, or that Goreddis would learn in four months the kind of trust they hadn’t learned in forty years?
Of course that was impossible. That didn’t stop me from wishing I could change the attitudes of Goreddis single-handedly, reach in and make people see sense.
The members of our Ninysh escort, despite Josquin’s protestations to the contrary, were not entirely sanguine about accompanying half-dragons. They concealed their feelings behind their professionalism, for the most part, but the longer we traveled, the more slips I began to notice. Once I noticed, I couldn’t unsee.
Some of the Eight made St. Ogdo’s sign if Abdo or I came too near. It was a subtle gesture intended to ward off the evil of dragons, just a circle made with thumb and finger. At first I thought I’d imagined it. The soldier saddling our horses seemed to make the sign over the beast’s withers, but when I looked straight at him, he wasn’t doing it. One soldier may have made it over her heart after I spoke to her, or did she have an itch?
Then there was the day Nan bought a bundle of barley twigs—slender, crunchy breadsticks, which Abdo loved—and Abdo reached right in and took three. Two of our soldiers, who had ridden up eagerly, now hesitated, reluctant to take any. Finally one of them made St. Ogdo’s sign, as unobtrusively as he could. Abdo saw it and froze mid-chew; he’d spent enough time in Goredd to know the gesture.
Nan saw the sign and went incandescent. She flung the remaining barley twigs to the ground, leaped from her horse, and pulled her comrade headfirst off his. She went at him, fists flying. Moy had to break it up.
Nan ended up with a split lip, but she’d given the other fellow a black eye. Her father imposed some kind of discipline on them both; I didn’t have enough Ninysh to understand, but Josquin paled. Nan seemed not to care. She returned to us, patted Abdo’s horse, and said huskily, “Do not take zis to heart, moush.”
Moush, meaning “gnat,” was her nickname for Abdo. Abdo nodded, his eyes wide.
I was the one who took it to heart.
I could not be completely comfortable now. It galled me to play my flute in the evenings. Josquin noticed the change, but if he fathomed the cause, he gave me no indication. “You’re a herald, not a circus bear,” he said one evening. “You can say no.”
But I didn’t say no. Playing flute was the one thing I knew could make people see a human, not a monster.
The eastern mountains came into view over the course of a week. I mistook them for a bank of clouds at first. As we traveled nearer, I discerned snowy peaks and a dark forest spreading at their feet like a stain. The legendary Pinabra.
We arrived in Meshi two days later. It stood at the border of the forest, along a river that divided the plains from the pines, western produce from eastern timber and ore. The crenellated turrets of Palasho Meshi rose at the center of town. The baronet was one of the more important Ninysh lordlings, supplying two crucial ingredients for pyria: sulfur and pine resin. We would be imposing on his hospitality for the night.
It was near noon, however, when we passed the city gates. Too early to call in at the palasho. “Let’s go to St. Fionnuala’s and ask the priest about his mural painter,” I suggested to Josquin.
After a quick word with Moy, Josquin led us through the sunny streets toward the riverside, the likeliest place for a church dedicated to the Lady of Waters. The Eight quarreled merrily about whether to turn upstream or down, until Nan cried out and pointed. The church was north, upstream, in sight.
As we approached, I noted that the facade was like nothing I had ever seen, a cacophony of helical columns, curly stone acanthus leaves, Saints in carved niches, gilded shells, and twisted marble ribbons. It was too busy to be beautiful, at least by Goreddi standards.
This church has wiggly eyebrows, said Abdo, tracing the undulating cornices in the air. And fish.
St. Fionnuala brings rain, I said. Hence the watery facade.
The inside also dripped with ornamentation, made more bearable by semidarkness; candlelight reflected off gilt surfaces on the ceiling, columns, and statuary. Only Josquin, Abdo, and I entered, so as not to overwhelm the priest. Our boots upon the marble floor made the vaulted chamber ring with echoes.
My eyes adjusted, and then I saw, illuminated with indirect sunlight, the mural above the altar. Josquin caught his breath and whispered, “Santi Merdi!” St. Fionnuala gazed steadily back at us, her eyes clear and compassionate, her magnanimous face unearthly and yet solidly real. Her pale green hair flowed past her shoulders, becoming a river at her feet. Her gown was shimmering water flowing over abundant earth. She seemed about to speak; we stood stock-still, as if awaiting her utterance.
“Benevenedo des Celeshti, amini!” said a voice to our right, making us jump. A tall, stooped priest emerged from the shadows, his white beard and robe catching the light eerily. St. Fionnuala’s waves in gold filigree adorned his mantle.
Josquin piously kissed a knuckle, like we do in Goredd. I followed suit. Abdo didn’t bother, but bounded up to examine the contents of a clay dish the priest held in his knobby hands.
“Yes, you should try those,” said Josquin, smiling at Abdo’s quizzical look. Abdo took what appeared to be a snail-shaped pastry, sticky with syrup. “Santi Fionani’s shells,” Josquin explained. “Quite a delicacy in the Pinabra.”
Abdo took a bite, his eyes bulging. He swallowed and took another bite, his mouth puckering. Phina madamina, you should try one, he said. No questions. Eat. He plucked a sticky roll off the dish and shoved it into my hands. The priest beamed and said something in Ninysh. Josquin nodded, watching my face as I bit into the pastry.
It wasn’t sweet. It tasted bitterly, fiercely, unmistakably of pine.
I didn’t dare spit it out. Abdo gave up trying to hold in his silent laughter; Josquin and the priest exchanged a few amused words. “I told him you’re Goreddi,” said Josquin. “And he told me you have no cuisine worth eating in Goredd.”
“Pine buns are cuisine?” I tried to scrape resin off my teeth with my tongue.
“Ask him about his muralist,” I said crossly, gesturing at the painting.
Josquin conferred quietly with the priest. The last of my pine bun somehow ended up under the altar; I’m sure it made some church mice happy. I clasped my sticky hands behind my back and examined the mural closely. The painter had signed her name in the bottom corner: Od Fredricka des Uurne.
I waited for a lull in the conversation, then pointed out the signature to Josquin.
“Od is a title from the archipelagoes. It means ‘great,’ ” said Josquin. “She’s a modest sort, clearly. She’s been commissioned to paint a Santi Jobirti next, as you thought. It’s at Vaillou, quite deep in the forest. You’ll be eating pine a long time.”
I rolled my eyes at Josquin, bowed respectfully to the priest, and kissed my knuckle toward Heaven. Josquin left something in the offering box.
Outdoors, noon glared unbearably off the river and the plastered walls. There was only one step down from the church door, and we all stumbled over it, even Abdo.
Is Vaillou very far? Abdo asked.
Josquin said it’s deep in the forest. I take that as a yes, I said. Why?
Abdo shielded his eyes with one hand and pointed east across the river with the other. Because I see an ityasaari’s mind just over there. Not far away at all.
We pursued this unexpected mind-fire, crossing the stone causeway over the wide, shallow river. Abdo rode ahead, the Eight close on his heels, chattering excitedly together. “They’re intrigued by his ability to see minds,” Josquin interpreted for me. “They think it would be useful.”
It would be useful to me as well; I tried not to feel sour about it, but turned my own mind toward who this might be. Not the painter. Had we stumbled across hermetic Glimmerghost?
The neighborhoods across the river were more village than town, not as dense, well kept, or paved as those in western Meshi. The houses looked hastily built. “The miners live on this side,” Josquin explained, pointing to men trudging homeward, coated head to toe in yellow sulfur dust. We passed the miners’ taverns and grocers. Their dogs ran in semi-feral packs, chased by their wholly feral children.
Abdo led us past the village, off the main road, and up a sandy track into the pines. Between the tall trees and the low shrubs, there was no middle layer of foliage. I could see a long way through the endless colonnade of plumb-line-straight reddish brown tree trunks. The soil showed yellow between gnarled roots.
Abdo halted his steed, looked around in confusion, then pulled his feet from the stirrups and stood balanced on the saddle to gain a wider view. His horse shifted uncertainly, pawing the ground, but Abdo retained his footing.
Is something wrong? I asked.
No, he said, scratching between his hair knots and staring east of the road, toward a low ridge. Her light is strange, that’s all. I reached out to tell her we were coming, and it shrank to almost nothing, like that plant where the leaves curl up when you touch it. He illustrated by making his hand close up like a flower. I’d never heard of such a plant.
Is she over that ridge, off the road? I asked.
Yes, but … He tapped a finger against his lips. It might be best to give her a little time to see if she unfolds again. Maybe we could eat first?
I conveyed this news to Josquin and Moy. Everyone seemed glad of a break; the Eight unpacked our simple provisions—bread from last night’s palasho, cheese, apples—and settled in for the midday meal. Some, sitting with their backs to resin-caked pine trunks, looked ready for a nap.
I must have been very hungry, because it took longer than it should have to notice that Abdo had disappeared. At first I thought he’d wandered off to “talk to the birds”—as Josquin had explained the Ninysh euphemism—but then Nan started to complain that a whole loaf of bread was missing. I called with my mind, Abdo? Where are you?
I’m going the last mile alone, he replied. She’s very shy, I think. The Eight will scare her, and she’ll scare them, and I don’t want them hurting her spiders.
Spiders? I said, looking around for any glimpse of him. Talking to him with my head gave me no sense of where he was, alas.
Josquin was watching me. “Are you well?” he asked.
I must have been making a face. “Abdo has gone on alone.” I explained his reasons, and whom we’d found—the eerie pale hermit surrounded by butterflies in my mind’s garden.
“We don’t need the Eight,” said Josquin, glancing over at our armed guards, some of whom were now napping heroically. “But I don’t think Abdo should go alone, either.”
I agreed. Josquin conveyed our intention to Moy, who frowned deeply and made Josquin take his dagger. I started up the ridge, Josquin at my heels. From the top, a barely perceptible track wound downhill between boulders; I couldn’t see Abdo but guessed he would have followed a visible path rather than charging through the thickening underbrush. The path grew steeper, and then we were descending a little ravine with a gurgling stream at the bottom. The pines grew thicker here, and the rocks mossier. The path ran downstream and soon became bogged in yellow clay. We slipped and skidded along, managing not to fall in the mud or the stream, until we reached a massive fallen tree covered in mushrooms and moss.
It seemed to be the only bridge. We crossed to the other side, and the path veered away from the stream, winding into the forest again.
Fifty yards along, we reached a clearing, where a shaft of sunlight illuminated a ramshackle hut made of bark and ferns. Abdo was halfway across, stepping gingerly, ducking something I couldn’t see. He’d mentioned spiders, and he looked like someone evading their webs, but I saw no silky threads gleaming in the sunshine.
Abdo looked back over his shoulder at us and said irritably, Stop right there.
Something in his tone made me freeze at once, but Josquin couldn’t hear him. I snatched at the herald’s sleeve as he passed, but missed. “Josquin!” I hissed.
Josquin looked back at me quizzically.
There was a sound of snapping twigs, and then Josquin disappeared down a hole.
Alarmed, I rushed forward. There was another snap, and Abdo cried, Duck!
I threw myself to the ground as an axe swung over my head and thudded into the trunk of a nearby tree.
“What is this?” I cried.
There are filaments of soul-light everywhere, like a giant spiderweb, said Abdo. Traps. You really should stay put.
He waved the pilfered loaf at me. I’ve been telling her about bread, and she’s very interested. At least I think she is. I get images from her, but no words.
He started picking his way forward again. I crawled through the ferns to the edge of Josquin’s hole and looked down. He waved from the center of a nest of broken twigs. “No casualties but my dignity,” called the herald, tugging on his chin beard. “Some might say that’s no loss at all.”
I explained about the filaments. “I’m not sure it’s safe to breathe.”
Oops, said Abdo. I looked up in time to see a cascade of small logs bowl his feet out from under him. He softened his landing with a diving roll, but some part of him must have grazed another mind-fire filament. Three mounds of pine needles began to rise from the forest floor, until each had grown to the height of a table. The nearest one twitched, shedding needles and revealing a woolly body the size of a human head connected to eight long, spindly legs.
I must have cried out, because Josquin shouted in alarm, “What is it?”
“Sp-spiders,” I managed. Josquin reached up and handed me Moy’s dagger. I took it, not sure what I could do with it. How could I reach the spiders—or Abdo—without snapping more invisible trigger threads?
Abdo, for his part, was gazing rapturously at the monsters with an openmouthed smile. Oh, Phina madamina, I wish you could see this.
I’m seeing plenty, I said. The spiders had begun taking shaky steps toward him.
These are machines, he said.<
“What, like Lars builds?” I asked, disbelieving. I understood the mechanics of Lars’s machines. They didn’t look like creatures.
Not exactly. She’s fixed her soul-light to them somehow. They’re animated by clockwork and her mind, together. He shook his head, marveling. This is her garden, Phina, but it’s made of things, not people. Her mind reaches out to objects.
He clambered to his feet and stepped toward the nearest spider, extending a hand to it as if it were a friendly dog.
“Don’t!” I cried, on my feet again in a trice. I took a single step, heard an ominous click, and threw myself backward. A gout of flame burst from the ground where I’d been standing.
Stay still, Abdo scolded me. He was petting the spider now. It hadn’t attacked.
Behind him, the hut’s lichen-crusted door opened silently, and a pale, petite woman stepped into the sunlight.
I’d called her Glimmerghost for a reason. She seemed to float behind Abdo, ethereal and bone-thin, as if she had sought to become transparent in fact. She didn’t seem old, but her hair was white, long, and so fine that it caught the slightest breeze and drifted around her head. Peeling blemishes—individual dragon scales—scarred her skin all over. From a distance they looked like graypox scars. Her dress was stained and mossy.
Her violet eyes gleamed with curiosity. She stepped toward Abdo with her slender hand outstretched, the way he’d approached the spider.
He turned to face her, and they stood a moment in silence, drenched in liquid sunlight. Abdo offered the loaf of bread, and she took it, the shade of a smile flickering across her face. She extended her other hand, and together they entered her earthy home.
This is going to take some time, Abdo told me after a quarter of an hour had passed. If I speak too much to her, it gives her a headache. Her soul-light is strong and fragile all at once, like cobwebs.
I rescued Josquin while we waited, although he insisted later—when I reported the incident to Captain Moy—that it was not so much rescuing as giving him a hand up.