Seraphina (17 page)

A large man in black dominated the bench, his feet dancing a ground-bass jig, his broad shoulders affording him a reach like a Zibou rock ape. I wasn’t short but I could not have reached in so many directions at once without straining something.

There was no music on the stand; surely no music had yet been written for this monstrosity. Was this cacophony his own composition? I suspected it was. It was brilliant, the way a thunderstorm across the moors or a raging torrent is brilliant, insofar as a force of nature may be said to have genius.

I was judging too hastily. I began to hear structure in the piece, the longer I listened. The volume and intensity had distracted me from the melody itself, a fragile thing, almost shy. The surrounding bombast was all a bluff.

He released the last chord like a boulder off a trebuchet. A bevy of monks who’d been hiding in nearby chapels like timid mice scurried out and accosted the performer in whispers: “Very nice. Glad it works. That’s enough testing; we’re about to have service.”

“I couldt play durink service, yes?” said the big man in a dense Samsamese accent. His head, close-cropped and blond, bobbed submissively.

“No. No. No.” The negative echoed all over the transept. The big man’s shoulders slumped; even from the back, he looked heartbroken. A pang of pity surprised me.

Surely this was Viridius’s golden boy, Lars. He had designed an impressive machine, taking up an entire chapel with its pipes and tubes and bellows. I wondered which Saint had been evicted to make room for it.

I should greet him. I felt I’d glimpsed his humanity, a piece of his heart in his playing. We were friends; he just didn’t know it yet. I stepped up and gently cleared my throat. He turned to look at me.

His middling chin, round cheeks, and gray eyes shocked me speechless. It was Loud Lad, who piped and yodeled and built pergolas in the garden of my mind.

“Hello,” I said calmly, my pulse racing in excitement and plain terror. Would all my grotesques, the entire freakish diaspora of half-dragons, walk into my life one by one? Would I spot Gargoyella busking on a street corner and Finch in the palace kitchens, turning the spits? Maybe I wouldn’t have to go looking for them after all.

Loud Lad gave courtesy with Samsamese simplicity, and said, “We hev not been introduced,
grausleine
.”

I shook his enormous hand. “I’m Seraphina, Viridius’s new assistant.”

He nodded eagerly. “I know. I am calledt Lurse.”

Lars. He spoke Goreddi like his mouth was full of pebbles.

He rose from his bench; he was taller than Orma, and as massive as two and a half Ormas, at least. He seemed simultaneously strong and soft, as if he had ended up with a lot of muscles rather by accident and didn’t care about keeping them. He had a nose like a compass needle; it pointed with purpose. He pointed it toward the quire, where the monks had begun cheerful hymns to St. Gobnait and her blessed bees. “They are havink service. Perheps we can …” He gestured past the Golden House, toward the north transept. I followed him out, into the hazy glare of afternoon.

We walked to the Wolfstoot Bridge, a shy silence hanging over us. “Would you like lunch?” I said, gesturing toward the clustered food carts. He said nothing, but stepped up eagerly. I bought us pies and ale; we carried them to the bridge’s balustrade.

Lars hefted himself up with unexpected grace and sat on the balustrade with his long legs dangling over the river. Like all proper Samsamese, he dressed gloomily: black doublet, jerkin, and joined hose. No ruffs or lace, no slashing or puffy trunk hose here. His boots looked like he’d owned them a long time and could not bear to give them up.

He swallowed a bite of pie and sighed. “I hev needt to speak with you,
grausleine
. I heardt you at the funeral and knew you were my …”

He trailed off; I waited, filled with curiosity and dread.

River gulls circled, waiting for us to drop the smallest crumb. Lars threw bits of pie crust over the river; the gulls swooped and caught them in midair. “I start over,” he said. “Hev you noticedt, perheps, thet an instrument can be like a voice? Thet you can tell who plays it just from listenink, without lookink?”

“If I am very familiar with the performer, yes,” I said carefully, unsure what he was getting at.

He puffed out his cheeks and looked at the sky. “Do not think me mad,
grausleine
. I hev heardt you play before, in dreamink, in …” He gestured toward his blond head.

“I didt not know what I was hearink,” he said, “but I believedt in it. It was like crumbs on the forest path: I followedt. They leadt me here where I can buildt my machine, and where I am less the, eh,
vilishparaiah
… sorry, my Gorshya not goodt.”

His Goreddi was better than my Samsamese, but
vilishparaiah
sounded like a cognate. The “paraiah” part did, anyway. I did not dare ask him about being half dragon; as much as I hoped that was the link between all my grotesques and me, I did not yet have proof. I said, “You followed the music—”

“Your music!”

“—to escape persecution?” I spoke gently, trying to convey sympathy and let him know I understood all about the difficulties of being a half-breed.

He nodded vigorously. “I am a Daanite,” he said.

“Oh!” I said. That was unexpected information, and I found myself reevaluating everything Viridius had said about his protégé, the way his eyes had gleamed.

Lars stared intently at the remains of his lunch, a veil of shyness drawn over him again. I hoped he hadn’t mistaken my silence for disapproval. I tried to coax him back out: “Viridius is so proud of your megaharmonium.”

He smiled but did not look up.

“How did you calculate the acoustics for that contraption?”

He raised his gray eyes sharply. “Acoustics? Is simple. But I needt somethink to write with.” I pulled a small charcoal pencil—a draconian innovation, rare in Goredd, but very useful—from the pocket of my surcoat. His lips twitched into a little smile and he started scrawling an equation beside him on the balustrade. He ran out of room to write as the notation approached his bum—he wrote sinister-handed—so he stood up on the railing, balancing like a cat, and wrote leaning over. He diagrammed levers and bellows, illustrated the resonant properties of types of wood, and elucidated his theory of how one might emulate the sounds of other instruments by manipulating wave properties.

Everyone turned to look at the enormous and unexpectedly graceful man balancing on the balustrade, doubled over writing, gabbling about his megaharmonium in intermittent Samsamese.

I grinned at him and marveled that anyone could possess such single-minded passion for a machine.

A cadre of courtiers approached the bridge on horseback but found it difficult to cross with all the merchants and townspeople gaping at Lars’s antics. The gentlemen made a ruckus with their horses; people scampered out of their way to avoid being trampled. One courtier, dressed in rich black, smacked dawdling gawpers with his riding crop.

It was Josef, Earl of Apsig. He didn’t notice me; his eye was fixed on Lars.

Lars looked up, met the earl’s fierce glare, and went white.

Goreddis claim that all Samsamese sounds like cursing, but Josef’s tone and body language left no doubt. He rode straight for Lars, gesticulating and shouting. I knew the words
mongrel
and
bastard
, and guessed the obscure halves of some compound words. I looked to Lars, horrified for him, but he stoically took the abuse.

Josef drove his horse right up against the balustrade, making it difficult for Lars to keep his balance. The earl lowered his voice to a vicious whisper. Lars was strong enough to have pitched scrawny Josef right off his horse, yet he did nothing.

I looked around, hoping someone would come to Lars’s aid, but no one on the crowded bridge made any move to help. Lars was my friend, for all that I’d known him two hours; I’d known Loud Lad for five years, and he’d always been a favorite. I sidled up to the horse and tapped at the Earl of Apsig’s black-clad knee, gingerly at first and then harder when he ignored me.

“Hey,” I said, as if I could talk to an earl that way. “Leave him alone.”

“This is not your affair,
grausleine
,” Josef sneered over his starched ruff, his pale hair flopping into his eyes. He wheeled his horse, driving me back. Unintentionally—perhaps—his horse’s hindquarters swung around and knocked Lars into the freezing river.

Everyone took off running then—some for the river’s edge, some to put as much distance between themselves and this fracas as possible. I rushed down the steps to the quayside. Rivermen were already shoving off in rowboats and coracles, extending poles over the choppy water, shouting directions to the flailing figure. Lars could swim, it seemed, but was hindered by his clothing and the cold. His lips were tinged blue; he had trouble getting his hands to close around the proffered poles.

Someone finally hooked him and reeled him in to shore, where old river ladies had hauled piles of blankets off their barges. A riverman brought out a brazier and stoked it high, adding a tang of charcoal to the fishy breeze.

I felt a pricking behind my eyes, moved by the sight of people pulling together to help a stranger. The bitterness I’d carried since morning, since the incident at St. Willibald’s Market, melted away. People feared the unfamiliar, certainly, but they still had tremendous capacity for kindness when one of their own—

Except that Lars wasn’t one of their own. He looked normal, except for his height and girth, but what lay under his black jerkin? Scales? Something worse? And here were the well-meaning, easily terrified townsfolk about to strip off his soaked clothing. He was shyly evading an old woman’s helping hands even now. “Come, lad,” she laughed, “ye need not be bashful wi’ me. What hain’t I seen, in my fifty years?”

Lars shivered—big shivers, to match the rest of him. He needed to get dry. I could think of only one thing to do, and it was slightly mad.

I leaped up on one of the wharf piles, cried, “Who wants a song?” and launched into a stirring a capella rendition of “Peaches and Cheese”:

The vagabond sun winks down through the trees
,

While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze
,

My friend, I was born for soft days such as these
,

To inhale perfume
,

And cut through the gloom
,

And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!

I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please
,

Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease
.

My only regret as I cross the high seas:

What I leave behind
,

Though I hope to find
,

My own golden city of peaches and cheese!

People laughed and clapped, most of them keeping their eyes on me. It took Lars a minute to grasp that this was all the cover he was going to get. He turned modestly toward the river wall, a blanket draped over his shoulders, and began peeling off his clothes.

He needed to move faster than that; this song only had five verses.

I remembered the oud strapped across my back, pulled it around, and launched into an improvised interlude. People cheered. Lars stared at me again, to my irritation. Had he not believed I could play either?
Thanks for all the faint praise, Viridius
.

Then, however, it was my turn to stare at Lars, because he appeared not to have anything odd about him at all. I spied no trace of silver on his legs, but he quickly covered them up with borrowed trousers. He kept the blanket draped across his shoulders as best he could until it slipped. I ogled his torso. Nothing.

No, wait, there it was, on his right bicep: a slender band of scales running all the way around. From a distance it looked like a bracelet in the Porphyrian style; he’d even found a way to inlay it with colorful glass gems. It might be taken for jewelry, easily, by anyone not expecting to find scales.