Seraphina (24 page)

“The idea of peace came to me in a dream when I was a student at Golya’s university, the Danlo Mootseye. We dragons do not dream. I took a class on dreaming: we slept in our saarantrai and reported each day on the wonders we had seen.

“One night I saw a hoard, gleaming like the sun. I stepped up to it, to run my fingers through it, but it wasn’t gold, it was knowledge! And I realized a wondrous truth: that knowledge could be our treasure, that there were things humankind knew that we did not, that our conquest need not comprise taking and killing, but could consist of our mutual conquest of ignorance and distrust.”

He began pacing the dais and gesticulating at oddly precise intervals, as if he’d seen a human do this before and concluded that it was a ritual dance that he could master. He said: “I told my dream in class, and was ridiculed. ‘What does knowledge look like? What knowledge could be worth having that we cannot discover on our own?’ But I knew the truth of it, I believed it down to my smoldering core, and from that day forward, I acted only for the sake of that vision. I grew mighty for its sake. I wrought a peace of steel. I wrestled with how best to learn your arts, your diplomacy, your ability to band together, while still retaining our essential dragonness. It has not been easy.

“Dragons are slow to change; we each want to fly our own direction. The only way to lead is to drag the rest, flapping and flaming, toward what is right. I treated with Queen Lavonda in secret, knowing it would be better to impose a treaty upon my own people than to endure a century of debating it in the Ker. I was right.

“The treaty has been and continues to be successful, thanks to reforms on our side and continuing good faith on yours. Here’s to forty more years, or—if I may extrapolate—a hundred. My cosigner will be long dead by then, and I’ll be addressing your grandchildren, but I intend this peace to last until the end of my days, and beyond.”

The gathered nobility hesitated, put off perhaps by such a casual reference to our shorter life spans, but in the end they all applauded. The Queen directed Comonot to the chair that had been placed for him between herself and Princess Dionne, and the long, tedious ritual of paying respects began. Everyone in that hall, from the Regent of Samsam to Little Lord Nobody of Pisky-on-the-Pigpond, expected an opportunity to meet Ardmagar Comonot and kiss the rings upon his thick fingers. I noted the Earl of Apsig lining up with everyone else, and felt a certain grim satisfaction.

The endless reception line required musical accompaniment, of course. I was on oud, but I’d forgotten my plectrum; I had blisters on my fingers by lunchtime.

I also had a headache. It had started with the leaking memory box and grown by the hour. “Are you all right, Music Mistress?” asked a voice from … I could not pinpoint it. I looked across at my musicians, who seemed bizarrely far away. Their faces wobbled. I blinked. “She’s gone so pale!” said a very slow voice indeed, a sound like dark honey through a sieve.

I wondered whether I’d miss lunch, and then my mother’s memory ambushed me.

One hundred sixty-one dragons perched atop High Nest. Below us: mountains. Above us: nimbus clouds moving south-southeast at 0.0034 terminus
.

The Ardmagar lectures the students and faculty of the Danlo Mootseye as the new term unfurls. His lecture’s title: “The Insidious Sickness.”

I know what that refers to. I cannot sleep, thinking about it. I am likely infected
.

I bring out my note block and turn it on. It was made by one of my father’s quigutl. It helps me remember, but nothing helps me forget
.

“Humanity can be our teacher,” cries the Ardmagar. “The point of peace is the exchange of knowledge. My reforms—the bans on vendetta and on hoarding, for two—are buoyed by human philosophies. Where such philosophies are logical, ethical, and quantifiable, we can make them our own
.

“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. Do not lose yourself to the wet brain. Tempted by the chemical intoxication of emotion, dragons forget what they are.”

The Ardmagar is wrong about that. I have never forgotten, to three significant digits, even when I wished to. And here I perch, not forgetting Claude
.

“Emotions are addictive!” cries the Ardmagar. “They have no meaning: they are antithetical to reason. They fly toward illogical, non-draconian moralities.”

“They fly toward art,” I mutter
.

He hears the echo of my voice; the acoustics of High Nest have been perfected over a millennium, that everyone may be heard. “Who spoke out of ard?”

I raise my head to an angle of 40 degrees, breaking the submissive stance. Everyone stares. “I said, Ardmagar, that emotions fly humans toward art.”

“Art.” He fixes me with a hunter’s gaze, gauging my speed and defenses. “Art gleams before us all, a hoard ungathered. I understand that, hatchling. But we study art. We fly over it from every direction, from a sane, safe distance. Someday we will comprehend its power. We will put it in ard. We will learn to hatch it, and why it’s worth hatching. But do not be tempted into the human flight path. Is a breath’s span of art worth a life span enslaved by the fetid backwash of the meaty brain?”

I lower my head, biting down on my instinct. This would be anger, for a human; I’ve felt that. In the dragon brain, it manifests as “flame or flee.” Why did I speak? He will measure my words and calculate that I am miasmic. The Censors will come at night; I will be sent down for excision. They will cut the unquantifiable right out of me
.

It would put my neurons back in ard. I have wished to forget; it’s why I came home. I want it, and don’t want it
.

One cannot fly in two directions at once. I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken
.

I scan the text recorded on my note block. To it I add:
Love is not a disease.

I opened my eyes, closing them again immediately when I saw Kiggs leaning over me, looking concerned, his hand on my forehead. Saints’ dogs, I’d collapsed under that memory. Why couldn’t I have plunged headfirst over the parapet and saved myself the mortification of waking up with everyone staring at me?

“She’s coming round,” he said. “Phina, do you hear me?”

“It’s stuffy up here,” said our best trumpeter. “We’ve been playing for three hours. She’s really all right?”

“It’s that bastard Viridius’s fault. He lets her take everything on herself!” That sounded like Guntard.

The hand on my forehead tensed at the word
bastard
. My eyes opened just in time to catch the irritation on Kiggs’s face; it softened upon seeing me awake.

He helped me rise. I swayed dizzily—the ground was so far away!—until I realized I was still up in the gallery, looking down at the almost empty hall. The last few dignitaries were trickling out, trying to pretend they weren’t staring up at me.

“What happened?” I croaked, my throat like parchment.

“You fainted,” said Guntard. “We thought you’d overheated, but we didn’t know how to cool you down decently. We took off your shoes—your pardon, please—and we were just going to roll up your sleeves—”

I looked away, bracing my hands against the railing so they wouldn’t shake.

“—but Prince Lucian suggested we fan you. Your oud is undamaged.”

“Thank you, Guntard,” I said, avoiding his eye and reaching for my shoes.

My musicians hovered solicitously, as if uncertain what I required. I waved a dismissal; they nearly trampled each other rushing off to lunch. Kiggs had claimed a chair and was sitting on it backward, leaning his chin on his hands, watching me. He was wearing a fancier scarlet doublet today, with ropes of gold braid crisscrossing it; his plain white armband looked all the more mournful in contrast.

“Don’t you have someplace official to be?” I said lightly as I buckled my shoes, trying to be funny but fearing he’d hear the crankiness beneath it.

He raised his eyebrows. “In fact, I do. But I’m also in charge of security, and there was quite a commotion up here when you keeled over. Selda promised she’d guard my plate. I’ll escort you down, if you like.”

“I don’t feel like eating.” I didn’t feel like vomiting either, thank Allsaints. I sat and rubbed my eyes; behind them, my head still ached. “Did you get my note?” I asked.

He sat up straighter. “Yes. Thank you. Sounds like your efforts yesterday were as futile as mine. I didn’t manage to speak with Eskar; she’d left for Dewcomb’s Outpost with the rest of the embassy staff to await the Ardmagar’s arrival.”

I said, “Does the embassy know about the knights’ story?”

He puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. “Grandmother met with Ambassador Fulda before he left, apprising him of the ‘rumor.’ ”

“Rumor?” I said, astonished. “She doesn’t believe Sir Karal saw a dragon?”

Kiggs shook his head irritably. “It pains me to say so, but she doesn’t want to believe that dragons might violate her treaty. 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.”

“Orma’s coin—” I began.

“Convinced her of nothing,” he said, drumming his fingers on the back of his chair; his nails were short as if he bit them, an unexpected habit in a Captain of the Guard. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose your teacher described Imlann’s saarantras at all?”

“Blue eyes, fair hair,” I said. “That describes two-thirds of the Ninysh courtiers.”

“It describes all the Ninysh, counting the redheads, and half the Highland Samsamese,” said the prince. “But there’s no reason to think he’s at court, surely? Where does Orma think he’d be?”

“Orma has no idea, of course. He only knows Imlann was at the funeral.”

Kiggs wagged a finger at me. “Selda and I talked it over. We think your idea about going to see Sir James and the knights—”

A clatter below interrupted him. A cadre of the palace guard had entered the hall; they snapped to attention at the sight of Kiggs up in the gallery. “Captain! The Queen is most displeased that you disregard the dictates of politeness to our—”

“I’ll be there directly,” Kiggs said, rising. He turned to me apologetically. “We’re not finished. Save me the fourth dance at the ball.”

I counted off the order of dances. “The pavano?”

“Perfect. We’ll talk more then.” He raised a hand as if to give me a soldierly slap on the shoulder, but then deftly turned it into a polite bow. He departed for his luncheon with the Ardmagar.

I sat for some moments, my thoughts in a tangle. I’d accepted an invitation to dance. I couldn’t dance, by anyone’s definition. Beyond that, I had no business dancing with a prince of any kind, even one who appeared to forget the differences in our social standing and who seemed, inexplicably, to find me a plausible person to confide in.

I leaned my forehead upon the cool stone balustrade. He thought I was normal, and that made me feel normal, and that was just cruel. I could have dispelled his illusions in an instant by pulling up my sleeve. Why live in fear that he might find me disgusting someday, when I could make it happen right now? I worked my right hand under the bindings of my left sleeve, feeling the cold plates, the sharp scalloped edges, my bodily horrors, and hating it.

Why had that memory sprung out at me so unexpectedly? Was it another “mind-pearl,” like the one Orma had triggered by revealing his natural form? Were there more? Was my head full of tinder, just waiting for a spark?

I stood up shakily, and my mother’s words came back to me:
I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken
. I chafed at her arrogance, and her good fortune. “The thing is, Mother, you weren’t broken,” I muttered, as if she were standing right next to me. “I am. And it was you who made me this way.”

Inside my head, the box twitched like a thing alive.

I
returned to my room for a nap, making sure to wake in plenty of time to change into my formal houppelande. It was maroon, embroidered with black; I added a respectful white sash for Prince Rufus. I attempted to do my hair nicely, because Glisselda’s comments had made me insecure; I redid it multiple times to no satisfactory result. I finally left it loose in sheer frustration and put on nice earrings as an apology to anyone who cared. I didn’t own much other jewelry except the earring Orma had given me. I considered hooking it into my hair—it would make an interesting ornament, and no human would recognize it—but a saarantras might discern that it was quigutl-made. I left it in my room.

We’d been preparing this welcoming concert for more than a month, but the sheer scale of the spectacle still astonished me. Maybe everything looks more impressive in the light of hundreds of candles, or an appreciative audience lends a performance a certain glamour, I don’t know, but some magic in the air made everything go well. No one was late or out of order; no one fell off the stage; if anyone played a wrong note, they played with such conviction that it sounded right.