Seraphina (51 page)

“So I prayed to St. Clare, but I took it a step further: I made her a promise. If she showed me the way, I would speak nothing but the truth from that day forward.”

“St. Masha and St. Daan!” I blurted out. “I mean, that explains a lot.”

He smiled, almost imperceptibly. “St. Clare saved me, and she bound my hands. But I’m skipping ahead. Uncle Rufus attended a wedding when I was nine years old, to provide a royal presence. I went with him. It was the first time they’d trusted me out of the castle walls in years, and I was anxious to show I could handle it.”

“My father’s wedding, where I sang,” I said, my voice unexpectedly hoarse. “You told me. I do vaguely remember seeing the pair of you.”

“It was a beautiful song,” he said. “I’ve never forgotten. It still gives me chills to hear it.”

I stared at his silhouette against the rusty sky, dumbfounded that this song of my mother’s should be a favorite of his. It glorified romantic recklessness; it was everything he scorned to be or do. I could not stop myself. I began to sing, and he joined in:

Blessed is he who passes, love
,

Beneath your window’s eye

And does not sigh
.

Gone my heart and gone my soul
,

Look on me love, look down

Before I die
.

One glimpse, my royal pearl, one smile

Sufficient to sustain me
,

Grant me this
,

Or take my life and make it yours:

I’d fight a hundred thousand wars

For just one kiss
.

“Y-you’re not a bad singer. You could join the castle choir,” I said, casting about for something neutral to say so I wouldn’t cry. My mother was as reckless as his, but she’d believed in this; she’d given everything she had. What if our mothers were not the fools we had taken them for? What was love really worth? A hundred thousand wars?

He smiled at his hands upon the parapet, and continued: “You sang, and then it hit me like a lightning strike, like the clarion of Heaven: the voice of St. Clare, saying,
The truth will out!
You yourself embodied the truth that could not be concealed or contained—not by a hundred fathers, or a hundred nursemaids—that would burst forth unbidden and fill the world with beauty. I knew I was to investigate the truth of things; I had been called to do this. I fell to my knees, thanked St. Clare, and swore I would not forget my vow to her.”

I was staring at him, thunderstruck. “I was the truth, and beautiful? Heaven has a terrible sense of humor.”

“I mistook you for a metaphor. But you’re right about Heaven because otherwise how is it that I am in this position now? I made a promise and have kept it to the best of my ability—though I have lied to myself, may St. Clare forgive me. But I hoped to avoid this very trap where I am caught between my own feeling and the knowledge that uttering the truth aloud will hurt someone very important to me.”

I barely dared think which truth he meant; I both hoped and dreaded that he would tell me.

His voice grew dense with sorrow. “I have been so preoccupied with you, Phina. I keep second-guessing myself. Could I have kept Aunt Dionne from Comonot’s suite if I hadn’t been dancing with you? I was so intent upon giving you that book. We might never have noticed Comonot leaving the ball but for Dame Okra.”

“Or you might have stopped them both, and then gone up and toasted the New Year with Lady Corongi,” I said, trying to reassure him. “You might be dead in that other scenario.”

He threw up his hands, despairing. “I have struggled all my life to put thought before feeling, not to be as rash and irresponsible as my mother!”

“Ah, right, your mother, and her terrible crimes against her family!” I cried, angry with him now. “If I saw your mother in Heaven, you know what I would do? I would kiss her right on the mouth! And then I would drag her to the bottom of the Heavenly Stair and point at you down here, and say, ‘Look what you did, you archfiend!’ ”

He looked scandalized, or startled anyway. I could not stop myself. “What could St. Clare have been thinking, choosing me as her unworthy instrument? She would have known I couldn’t speak the truth to you.”

“Phina, no,” said Kiggs, and at first I thought he was scolding me for maligning St. Clare. He raised a hand, let it hover a moment, and then placed it over mine. It was warm, and it stole my breath away. “St. Clare did not choose wrongly,” he said softly. “I always saw the truth in you, however much you prevaricated, even as you lied right to my face. I glimpsed the very heart of you, clear as sunlight, and it was something extraordinary.”

He took up my hand between both of his. “Your lies didn’t stop me loving you; your truth hasn’t stopped me either.”

I looked down reflexively; he was holding my left hand. He noticed my discomfiture and with a deft and delicate touch folded back my sleeve—all four of my sleeves—exposing my forearm to the frigid air, the fading sunset, and the emerging stars. He ran his thumb along the silver line of scales, his brow puckering in concern at the scab, and then, with a sly glance at me, he bowed his head and kissed my scaly wrist.

I couldn’t breathe; I was overcome. I didn’t usually feel much through my scales, but I felt that to the soles of my feet.

He replaced my sleeves, respectfully, as if draping a Saint’s altar. He kept my hand between his, warming it. “I was thinking about you, before you came up. Thinking, praying, and reaching no conclusion. I was inclined to leave love unspoken. Let us get through this war; let Glisselda grow into her crown. The day will come, please Heaven, when I can tell her this without throwing us all into chaos. Maybe she would release me from my promise, but maybe not. I may have to marry her in any case, because she must marry, and I remain her best option. Can you live with that?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But you’re right: she needs you.”

“She needs us both,” he said, “and she needs us not to be so distracted by each other that we are unable to do our parts in this war.”

I nodded. “Crisis first, love later. The day will come, Kiggs. I believe that.”

His brow creased fretfully. “I hate keeping this from her; it’s deceit. Small lies are no better than big ones, but if we could please keep everything to a minimum until—”

“Everything?” I said. “Porphyrian philosophy? Amusing tales of bastardy?”

He smiled. Ah, I could last a long time on those smiles. I would sow and reap them like wheat.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“You mean you’re not going to kiss my wrist again,” I said. “But that’s all right, because I am going to kiss you.”

And I did.

If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one.

I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence, and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.

No Heaven but this!
I thought, and I knew that it was true to a standard even St. Clare could not have argued.

Then it was done, and he was holding both my hands between his and saying, “In some ballad or Porphyrian romance, we would run off together.”

I looked quickly at his face, trying to discern whether he was proposing we do just that. The resolve written in his eyes said no, but I could see exactly where I would have to push, and how hard, to break that resolve. It would be shockingly easy, but I found I did not wish it. My Kiggs could not behave so shabbily and still remain my Kiggs. Some other part of him would break, along with his resolve, and I did not see a way to make it whole again. The jagged edge of it would stab at him all his life.

If we were to go forward from here, we would proceed not rashly, not thoughtlessly, but Kiggs-and-Phina fashion. That was the only way it could work.

“I think I’ve heard that ballad,” I said. “It’s beautiful but it ends sadly.”

He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. “Is it less sad that I’m going to ask you not to kiss me again?”

“Yes. Because it’s just for now. The day will come.”

“I want to believe that.”

“Believe it.”

He took a shaky breath. “I’ve got to go.”

“I know.”

I let him go inside first; my presence was not appropriate for tonight’s ritual. I leaned against the parapet, watching my breath puff gray against the blackening sky as if I were a dragon whispering smoke into the wind. The conceit made me smile, and then an idea caught me. Cautiously, avoiding ice, I hauled myself up onto the parapet. It had a wide balustrade, adequate for sitting, but I did not intend merely to sit. With comical slowness, like Comonot attempting stealth, I drew my feet up onto the railing. I removed my shoes, wanting to feel the stone beneath my feet. I wanted to feel everything.

I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own.

We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.

I’d had more than my share of beautiful today. Tomorrow I’d give some back, restore and replenish the world. I’d play at Princess Dionne’s funeral; I’d put myself on the program this time, on purpose, since there was no longer any need for me to stay out of the public eye. I might as well stand up and give what I had to give.

The wind whipped my skirts around, and I laughed. I stretched my arm up toward the sky, spreading my fingers, imagining my hand a nest of stars. On impulse, I threw my shoes as hard as I could at the night, crying, “Scatter darkness! Scatter silence!” They accelerated at thirty-two feet per second squared, landing somewhere in Stone Court, but Zeyd was wrong about the inevitability of hurtling toward our doom. The future would come, full of war and uncertainty, but I would not be facing it alone. I had love and work, friends and a people. I had a place to stand.