Shadow Scale (15 page)

Oh, those eyes. I could tell I would be seeing them in uncomfortable dreams. They seemed to bore into me and find me wanting.

The artist took a step back and scrutinized her work, wiping her hands on her smock, leaving distinct charcoal handprints on her backside. A light shawl covered her head, hiding her most distinctive half-dragon feature, but I knew she must be Od Fredricka. Even in this bare-bones sketch, I could see the shadow of the realism and power to come, an echo of her other paintings.

Without turning around, she began speaking in a clear, light voice, apparently to me. She would have heard the door complain as I opened it. Alas for my dreadful Ninysh. I could tell she was saying something about St. Abaster, but nothing more.

“Pallez-dit Gordiano?”
I called, asking if she spoke my language and undoubtedly butchering the pronunciation.

She glanced over her shoulder, a sneer on her freckled face.
“Nen. Samsamya?”

My Samsamese was passable. “What were you saying?” I asked.

She began climbing down the scaffolding, stiffly, like an arthritic old woman. “That I always read the scriptures before I draw a Saint.”

“Oh,” I said. “That sounds sensible.”

“History has become smudged over six hundred years. Only the Saints’ own words have come down to us,” she said, still climbing. “Edicts, precepts, philosophies. Lies. None of them wrote as much as St. Abaster, and what a
monstruoigo
he was.”

That lone word of Ninysh was easy to guess.

“Look at him,” she said, pausing to gaze back up at her drawing. “He hates you.”

His eyes certainly seemed to. I shuddered.

“He hates us all,” she continued, resuming her labored descent. “He pulled dragons out of the sky with his mind and killed five of his fellow Saints. Samsam hopes he will return someday. Should this worry us?”

She reached the ground at last and pulled off her head covering. I knew what I would see, but it was still a shock: her scalp was shingled with silver scales, like some horrifying case of cradle cap. Her violently red hair tufted through the gaps wherever it could, standing straight up like a hedge.

She was tall and stout, her smock flecked in blues and greens and just enough red to make you wonder. Her round baby face contradicted her matronly bosom, making it hard to guess her age,
but I believed she was about thirty. She sauntered toward me, casually drawing a knife from her pocket and cleaning her grimy nails with it.

“So,” said Od Fredricka, “why would Count Pesavolta send a Goreddi? What is his devilish scheme?” I opened my mouth to reassure her, but she cut me off. “It doesn’t matter. I have fulfilled his condition. Now give me my money.”

I handed over the promissory note Josquin had given me. She gave it a cursory glance, crumpled it, and tossed it onto the floor. “I would have to go into a large town to exchange that.”

I stooped to retrieve the note. She kicked it out of reach.

“Why is Count Pesavolta looking for me?” she said, stepping around me in a circle, still holding the knife. “Not for a neighborly glass of pine brandy. He wants something. If I spend his note, his men will seize me.”

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I began, trying to emulate Josquin’s tone, soothing and authoritative at once.

“I doubt that,” she said. “The very wording of that message was suspicious: ‘information leading to the whereabouts.’ As if I were a criminal. You’re not removing me from this place without violence.”

“Count Pesavolta doesn’t want you,” I said. “Goredd does.”

“Goredd?” she cried, her mouth buckling into a deeper scowl. “Liar. Pesavolta offered the reward.”

“Look,” I said, turning back my sleeve to show my scales. “I’m your sister.”

She goggled at me, speechless.

“My name is Seraphina Dombegh. I’m Goreddi; I don’t even
speak Ninysh. Goredd is gathering half-dragons to help her when the dragon war spills south. You mentioned St. Abaster’s Trap. We can create something similar with our minds, an unseen barrier in the air.”

Her face had gone weird and blue, as if she were holding her breath.

I continued hastily, “That’s why I’m gathering our kind together, officially. But I also know that we have each felt alone, even rejected. I hope we might be family to each other, supporting—”

“You only get more ridiculous,” Od Fredricka said with sharp finality, like a cleaver coming down on bone. “I should come to Goredd to be your
family
—devils take us all—because we both have scales? Shall we be the best of friends?” She clasped her hands to her breast. “All our problems magically solved, if only we were together!”

I stared, appalled, not knowing what to say. She glared back with cruel eyes, and it suddenly struck me that the eyes she’d sketched upon the wall were her own.

“You’re an idiot and an ass,” she said, leaning in. Her breath was rank. “Leave now, and never let me see you again.”

“Think it over,” I said, fighting to keep from trembling. “If you change your mind, go to the home of Dame Okra Carmine in Segosh. She’s one of us—”

“One of us!” Od Fredricka repeated in a singsong voice. Then she opened her mouth frightfully wide and screamed in my face, a wordless, piercing shrill. I staggered back. She raised her knife and screamed again. I snatched the crumpled scrip off the floor and
bolted down the spiral stairs without the torch, scrabbling in darkness until I reached the bottom.

The abbot was waiting for me, scowling. He must have heard the scream.

“I’m sorry”—I was breathing hard—“Father.” I hastily smoothed the promissory note against my doublet. “Here. For your trouble. Forgive me.”

He took the money but did not apparently forgive me. He pushed me toward the egress, poking me between the shoulder blades to urge me along, until I was out on the windy cliff porch again. He slammed the door behind me—or rather, closed it quietly so as not to further disrupt his order, but I knew that stern click for a slam. The single monk out on the porch seemed to have just finished winding up the rope ladder and was not entirely pleased to see me.

He cast the ladder back down, but I was so shaky I feared to climb it. I would lose my footing. The cliff would crumble at my touch.

Everything felt like it was crumbling. I leaned against one of the pillars and tried to catch my breath.

How dare she? I had come so far, at considerable trouble to myself, to do her this immeasurable favor, and she threw it back in my face. Monstrous ingratitude! She cared nothing for my heartache, my loneliness, my selfless efforts to bring us together. For a single, weightless moment, I hated her.

I couldn’t sustain it, though, not when I was so much better at hating myself.

At the back of my mind, questions niggled. What had I
expected? I’d set myself up as the rescuer of someone who didn’t want rescuing—or need it, to be brutally honest. Who was I to butt into this woman’s life and tell her I knew better than she did what she had suffered and how she should fix it?

Might I have approached her differently? She was an artist; I was a musician. Surely there were things we might have discussed, ways we could have been friends?

I had framed my quest, this gathering of ityasaari, as an act of compassion, but it wasn’t, really. Not if I set myself apart, as some hero to save them. It was impossible to see someone else’s pain from that distance. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see it. Maybe I’d wanted them to see mine, or to reflect and affirm it like a mirror.

I wasn’t here to help Od Fredricka so much as to heal myself. Dame Okra had implied that I wanted such a thing, and I’d ignored her.

I dreaded telling Glisselda and Kiggs how I’d spoiled my chance with Od Fredricka, although I felt certain they’d be nice about it. The mind barrier would still work, surely; there would be enough ityasaari. We had Nedouard and Blanche, and there were more to find.

I wasn’t certain about any of them now, though. This had shaken my confidence.

I rubbed my watering eyes with a finger and thumb and took a breath to gather myself. I raised my eyes for a moment, taking in the spreading gorge below and the eastern mountains rising behind it.

One mountain, its peak snowy and crooked, loomed over the others. I knew that mountain; there was a miniature version of it
in my garden of grotesques. I hadn’t known where we might find it. I stared with a mixture of joy and dread.

Goredd still needed the ityasaari, whatever doubts I’d begun to have about myself. I climbed down the rope ladder as fast as I could manage.

Below, everyone had settled in for a light supper. Josquin sprang up to hold the bottom of the ladder steady; I took his hand and leaped down onto the carpet of pine needles. “She’s not coming,” I said loudly, preempting the inevitable questions.

“Sit. Eat,” said Josquin gently, directing me toward Abdo. “You look shattered.”

Nan handed me bread and cheese, her brows drawn in concern.

“That crooked mountain to the east,” I said, nodding thanks. “How long would it take to get there?”

“Three days’ ride,” said Moy, sitting up straighter. “It’s called Pashiagol, the Mad Goat’s Horn. I grew up in its shadow.”

“There isn’t time for a detour,” said Josquin, darting his gaze between us. “Dame Okra said six weeks; you have a tight schedule in Samsam.”

“I know, but there’s an ityasaari on that mountain,” I said. “I hadn’t realized he was Ninysh.”

“If we ride hard, we might make it in two,” Moy piped up. “Then you’re only four days behind schedule. You can make that up in Samsam, I should think.”

Josquin threw up his hands. “As long as you don’t leave me to bear my cousin’s wrath alone,” he said, “I am at everyone’s service. Let us detour through Donques.”

I started in on my bread, surprised at how hungry I was. Abdo
sidled closer and leaned his cheek against my shoulder. I met his canny gaze.

You’re disappointed
, he said.

Chastened, more like
, I said, picking a pine needle off my cheese.
I see where I was lying to myself
.

He nodded gravely and shifted his eyes toward the monastery.
She’s going to be all right. Her soul-light is strong and prickly as a hedgehog, like Dame Okra’s. Perhaps this couldn’t be helped. Anyway, one Dame Okra at a time is enough, don’t you think?

He was trying to make me laugh, but in truth, I would gladly have gathered a thousand Dame Okras, had they but consented to come.

After two days’ hard riding over increasingly steep terrain, we finally reached the village of Donques, on the flank of the crooked mountain. My garden’s wild man, Tiny Tom, lived in a cave somewhere nearby. He was eight feet tall with clawed talons for toes; surely he didn’t come near the village. We would stay at the local palasho and spend a couple days combing the surrounding mountainside.

When I’d reported my failure with Od Fredricka, I’d mentioned the proximity of Tiny Tom. “You should go after him,” Glisselda had said, “but don’t forget that you’re due in Fnark, in Samsam, by St. Abaster’s Day. Can you still make it if you detour through Donques?”

“Josquin says so,” I replied, but I was a little disconcerted. There was St. Abaster again, as if he were following me.

Of course, there was no guarantee of finding the Samsamese
ityasaari even if I made it to Fnark in time. If an extra day in Donques ensured that I could bring an ityasaari home, I would insist that we stay. Tiny Tom seemed like a bird in the hand.

As we rounded the last turn of the switchback trail, we saw the villagers of Donques out en masse. The men wore fine embroidered smocks and hats; the women had braided ribbons into their fair hair and given the children a quick spit polish. The whole village was resplendent; the gold, orange, and crimson flag of Ninys flapped from every peaked rooftop, and the window boxes overflowed with pink and yellow blooms.

The crowd was following an ox-drawn wagon far ahead of us, festooned with bright ribbons and garlands of flowers, carrying a statue draped in gauzy fabrics. Beside me, Moy grinned. “It’s Santi Agniesti. She’s our patroness here. Makes good cheese.”

The citizenry were following the statue up the road at a funereal pace. At the sound of our horses, the crowd parted to let us pass.
Are we part of the procession?
asked Abdo. Without waiting for my answer, he stood upon his saddle, holding the reins one-handed with confident subtlety. He smiled down at the gaping villagers, waving his skinny arm and blowing kisses. He did a standing backflip on the saddle; the crowd gasped and then applauded lightly.

“Is this all right?” I asked Moy, but I could tell by his grin he was loving it.

“My cousins are all here somewhere; they’ll enjoy this show. But be careful,
moush
!” he called, using Nan’s nickname for Abdo. “Don’t fall on your head.”

Abdo batted his eyes like innocence incarnate, then gripped the front of his saddle and lifted his legs into a handstand.

“Santi Merdi!” boomed Moy, laughing. “I should tie you to your horse.”

Abdo made it a one-handed handstand.

The village’s market square was packed with people. Santi Agniesti’s cart veered off toward her rosy chapel, painted with murals of birds, cows, and alpine flowers, but the crowds lingered among food stalls, merchants’ booths, and puppet shows. “The palasho is up the road to our left,” Josquin called, but our party had come to a grinding halt. Moy exclaimed joyously, dismounted, and was mobbed by people clasping his hands and slapping his back. Moy tossed small children into the air and kissed their foreheads.