Shadow Scale (22 page)

I staggered downstairs. Nedouard and Blanche sat in Dame Okra’s formal dining room, side by side in comradely silence. Surgical tools, metal scraps, and dirty dishes were spread before them across the pristine white tablecloth between two incongruous bouquets of lilacs. Blanche, who had been coiling copper wire around an iron rod, smiled enormously when she saw me and leaped to her feet. She looked healthier; there was some pink in her cheeks, and her scales looked shinier and less like scabs. She’d acquired a pale green gown, and even it seemed more solid than what she’d worn before. “Hey hey you wanting it breakfast I can to make it at you,” she said in an astonishing deluge of Goreddi. “Kitchen is all food.”

I was overwhelmed by her sweetness and joy, and had to swallow hard before I could answer. Maybe we’d done a few things worth doing after all. “I’m not hungry, thank you,” I managed to say. Blanche looked dumbfounded by the notion of “not hungry,” but she plopped back down and resumed winding wire.

“She’s remembering her words,” said Nedouard. Even he seemed happier without his mask or leather apron; he wore a sensible wool doublet and linen shirt, like any other man of modest means. His eyes smiled, even if his beak could not, and he was polishing a wicked-looking saw. “Welcome back,” he added, testing the blade by paring a delicate curl off the edge of his thumbnail.

“Is Dame Okra here?” I asked, wanting to talk about Gianni and get it over with.

“She’s in the library,” said Nedouard, setting aside the saw and absently reaching for a tiny silver bowl, a saltcellar. He stirred the salt with the tiny spoon.

“She is to talk on herself with ghosts!” cried Blanche, her violet eyes wide.

The old plague doctor laid a hand upon Blanche’s arm and spoke in low tones. She nodded, whimpering, and refocused on her wires. “Dame Okra was up all night,” said Nedouard. “Talking, apparently. It kept Blanche awake.”

“Talking to whom?” I said, watching him empty the salt into a vase of flowers.

He raised his gentle blue eyes to my face. “Herself, I believe. It’s not an unusual trait in someone so old, although I haven’t observed her doing it before. I find it much more disturbing that she’s so cheerful this morning.”

“That is rather alarming,” I said, and couldn’t help smiling. “I’ll need to see for myself before I believe it, but I promise to get to the bottom of things.”

As I spoke, Nedouard matter-of-factly tucked the tiny silver salt bowl into the front of his shirt. I stared at him pointedly; it took him a moment to grasp why, and then he shamefacedly extracted the dish and set it back on the table. “Many of my patients are too poor to pay,” he said. “I fear I have developed rather a habit of taking payment where I find it, from those who won’t miss it. It’s a difficult custom to break.”

I suspected that wasn’t the entire truth, and that the saltcellar would disappear back down his shirt the moment I left the room. I did him the honor of nodding, however, before I went looking for Dame Okra, who was rumored to be cheerful.

It was generally easy to find Dame Okra in her own house; her brassy voice was like a premonition itself, preceding her wherever she went. I could hear her talking as I approached the library. I pressed my ear against the door, and her voice carried clearly: “… more than a hundred years, thinking I was unique in all the world. You can imagine how alone I felt. Well, no, you wouldn’t need to imagine, would you. You
know
.”

That was quite an elaborate conversation for her to be having aloud with herself. I opened the door cautiously. Dame Okra sat behind an ornate mahogany desk at the far end of the library, papers spread around her, quill in hand. She looked up at the sound of the door opening and smiled gloriously.

I may have staggered back a step from shock. It was not just the smile: there was no one else in the room.

“Seraphina, come in! I’m so pleased you’re finally awake,” she said, gesturing toward a seat facing the desk. I darted my gaze across her desk, noting parchment, ink, books, pen, sealing wax. No thnik that I could see. Whom had she been speaking to?

“I’m making a full accounting of your journey and expenses for Count Pesavolta,” said Dame Okra, seeming not to register my perplexity. “Don’t worry, you needn’t deal with him. You could sign this thank-you note, though.” She waved me nearer so she might hand over a letter and pen.

I sat in a leather chair facing her desk and scanned the page. She’d written effusively about all the good he’d done, letting me travel through Ninys; it said Goredd was in his debt, but didn’t make any specific promises. It seemed safe enough to sign.

“We need to talk about Gianni Patto,” I said as I handed back the letter and quill.

“Not to worry,” she said. “I went this morning and secured his release.”

I goggled at her. “I—I’m sorry, you … what?”

Dame Okra nodded eagerly. “As soon as he’s all cleaned up, he’s coming here.”

“Here, as in
here
?” I said, pointing at the floor beside my chair.

“I have room, and the count would keep him in the stables, not bring him indoors and start the long road to civilizing him,” she said. She sounded so reasonable.

“You shouldn’t bring him into your house,” I said, shaking off my shock and recovering my purpose. “It was a mistake to bring him down from the mountains. He’s violent, unpredictable, and not entirely in control of himself.” He was also full to the brim with Jannoula; I had intended to say as much, but something made me hesitate.

Who
had
she been talking to? The back of my neck prickled.

“
You
shouldn’t mind if he’s here or not,” said Dame Okra, her protuberant eyes narrowing. “You’re to leave for Samsam tomorrow at dawn. Your guides have been at the palasho a week, waiting for you, and Pesavolta wants them off.”

So soon. Of course there was no time to waste. “Will Abdo be well enough to come with me?” I’d said I’d visit him this morning, I recalled with a pang, but I’d slept straight through.

“Absolutely not,” said Dame Okra, looking scandalized at the suggestion. “Abdo needs to rest for a few weeks. I’ll take him to Goredd with Gianni, Blanche, and Ned.”

“Can I see him before I go?”

“He’s in surgery now to reconnect the tendons of his hand,” she said. “Don’t worry, Dr. Belestros is the best dragon physician the count could buy.”

I wouldn’t even get to say goodbye. “What about Josquin?” I said.

“Belestros has him sedated. He was in terrible pain all night,” said Dame Okra mournfully. It was the first inkling of sadness she’d shown for her distant cousin, but it didn’t last. Her smile reasserted itself. “You can’t see him, either, but you could write him a letter. I know he’s your friend.”

She’d delivered a terrible amount of difficult news at once, but underneath my shock and sorrow, something else bothered me. I tried to untangle my feelings and see it clearly, to no avail until Dame Okra said, “All this struggle is going to be worth it in the end, Seraphina, when we’re all together as we were meant to be.”

That didn’t sound like Dame Okra at all.

The cheerfulness. The turnaround on Gianni. The conversation she’d been having with herself …

I had been so preoccupied with Josquin’s injury last night that I hadn’t seen what had happened right in front of me. Before Gianni had screamed or Josquin had fallen off his horse, Dame Okra had had a premonition.

Her mind had reached out to Gianni and found Jannoula.

I studied Dame Okra’s froggy face. The blissful expression wasn’t Jannoula’s; Dame Okra didn’t look the way Gianni did when Jannoula spoke through him. Blanche had said Dame Okra
hadn’t slept; might Jannoula have spent all night talking to her? Persuading, manipulating … even changing?

If Dame Okra had been contacted by Jannoula, how did that work? Was it like hearing Abdo’s voice, or could Jannoula have wormed into her more deeply, as she’d done to Gianni and to me? I remembered how she’d altered my thoughts and emotions, but also how they had snapped back into place when she was completely gone.

I remembered how she could linger in my head and listen to my conversations.

I said, “Show yourself, Jannoula.”

Dame Okra’s expression sharpened at once, her bulgy eyes narrowing to feline cunning. “Hello, Seraphina,” she said with Jannoula’s flat inflection. “I don’t suppose this really counts as a surprise, but it is pleasant nonetheless.”

Surprise or not, I felt sickened. “Release Dame Okra. Leave her at once.”

Jann-Okra shook her head, tsking. “And you immediately turn things unpleasant. Why, Seraphina? Dear Okra’s mind reached out to me. I’d tried knocking—it worked with Gianni, and other unsuspecting innocents—but she wouldn’t answer. She was very closed off; I couldn’t reach her any other way.”

Dame Okra had been so adamant about not letting anyone into her mind. She must have heard Jannoula’s “knock,” but her suspicious nature kept her from answering. Gianni would not have had the wit, but who were these others? Someone had told her about my search.

“I’ve made an old woman a little less lonely,” Jann-Okra was saying. “You overheard her talking to me, surely. How could you not? She has a voice like a mule.”

I glowered. “I heard.”

“Why begrudge her my company if she enjoys it?” She leered nastily, an expression Dame Okra’s face was already quite good at. “I’m tempted to teach you a lesson. I could speak to you in your head again, through Miss Fusspots, and make you unfasten her, like you did Gianni. I could make you eject everyone from your garden, one by one, until you are truly, utterly alone.”

She smiled bitterly. “You’ve never appreciated how lucky you are. Your mind reached for the rest spontaneously. I had to go looking, but my diligence reaps a good harvest at last. I have sought and I have found. Seeing them all in your head helped me. You were my map.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this?”

She looked mildly surprised. “I want exactly what you want, Seraphina: the half-dragons together at last. We’re on the same quest; I consider you my helpmate.”

“I’m not doing this for you!” I cried.

She wasn’t listening; her eyes had suddenly gone glassy. Her wrinkled cheeks paled, and a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. I leaned forward, holding my breath, hoping that this was the opening salvo in some internal war, that Dame Okra was fighting back. The old woman was so pugnacious that I couldn’t imagine her not battling Jannoula. If anyone could hope to defeat her, surely—

Her eyes refocused and Jannoula’s voice said: “So that’s her famous sense of premonition. Intriguing, and surprisingly painful.” She rubbed Dame Okra’s padded belly and swallowed like one fighting nausea. “The vision pleased me, however. Seraphina, you have helped me whether you meant to or not, and in mere moments you will learn how I’ve helped you.”

There was a knock at the front door.

One of Dame Okra’s maids scurried past the library to answer it; after a hushed and hurried exchange of words, the visitor came clumping down the corridor toward us. Jann-Okra pursed her thick lips into a coy smile. I turned to face the door, bracing myself, not sure whom or what we were expecting.

It was Od Fredricka. Her red hair had tangled into an even wilder mane; mud caked her shoes. She stared with wild eyes, as if she hadn’t slept in days. She stumbled into the library, clasped her hands to her heart, and fell on her knees at my feet.

“Seraphina. Sister. Thank Allsaints I got here in time,” said Od Fredricka, huskily, in Samsamese. “I don’t know how to ask your forgiveness. I was awful. I mocked and abused you. I told the monks you were a monster, and they had you followed.”

I put a hand to my mouth, horrified. Here was the author of Abdo’s heartache.

“I have been alone all my life,” she pleaded, cupping her hands as if I might pour forgiveness into them. “I raised a palisade against the world. It kept hurt at bay, but it gave me no option to let kindness in. I did not—could not—believe in your friendship.

“I see now what a lonely life that was,” said the painter, groveling at my feet. “I don’t want to die alone. I want us all to be together. Forgive me my unjust hostility.”

I looked quickly back at Dame Okra, who raised her hands innocently and said in Jannoula’s voice, “It’s not me animating her. I can’t occupy more than one mind at a time. I can’t even attend to myself while I’m in Dame Okra’s head. For all I know, my body is being eaten by wolves right now.”

I ignored her melodrama. “You did something to her. You changed her mind.”

“I merely opened a few doors and showed her a truth she had hidden from herself. Her loneliness is her own.”

“You did that against her will.”

Jannoula shrugged Dame Okra’s shoulders. “If it was Od Fredricka’s will to be a miserable crank, then her will is an ass. I have no qualms about overriding it.”

Od Fredricka did not understand our Goreddi, but she heard her name spoken. She raised her forehead from the floor and said, “What?”

Dame Okra’s face went momentarily slack, and then she blinked rapidly, clutching the arms of her chair as if she’d grown weak and dizzy. I watched her intently, wondering if this signaled the end of Jannoula’s active possession. It seemed to, but I knew Jannoula’s awareness might still be coiled passively in Dame Okra’s head, observing everything through her eyes and ears.