Shadow Scale (30 page)

For two ceaseless, churning days, my stomach tried to turn itself inside out. It raged and tempested. I couldn’t stand up. Abdo and Ingar took shifts dabbing my head with a sponge and feeding me spoonfuls of honeyed water, half of which came back up.

You’re green
, Abdo informed me one night, his eyes wide.
Green as a lizard
.

On the third day, I slept at last and dreamed that I was alphabetizing an infinite library that turned out to be myself. When I awoke, I staggered up on deck, blinking in the wind and sunshine,
and found that life had gone on without me. The sailors were allowing Abdo to climb the rigging, bandaged hand and all, and Ingar not only spoke better Porphyrian than me but had taken to the sailors’ impenetrable patois like a second mother tongue.

“Nautical Porphyrian wasn’t difficult to pick up,” Ingar explained over dinner in the crowded sailors’ mess. He, Abdo, and I were crammed together at a side table, eating salt cod and mushy lentils off square plates. “Once I realized they said
braixai
where standard Porphyrian has
brachas
, it was a matter of substituting diphthongs and—”

“You have a facility with languages,” I said, impressed in spite of myself. His Goreddi had improved, his Samsamese accent melting away before my ears, even during our first conversation.

He turned pink to his scalp. “I’ve read a lot, in many languages. That gives me a basis for speaking, but I didn’t have the phonemes until I heard them.”

“But how did you learn to read so many languages?”

I pressed. He looked up from his lentils, his spectacles reflecting the lantern light. “I examined the words from all angles until they made sense. Isn’t that the usual way?”

For the first time in days, I cracked a grin; my face felt like it had forgotten how. The usual way? It was the daft, steep, unscalable way, and yet I felt like I was glimpsing the real Ingar, not Jannoula’s stooge. “Maybe you can help me with Porphyrian grammar,” I said. “I’m hopeless at—”

Abdo kicked me under the table.
I’m teaching you Porphyrian!

Of course you are
, I said,
but I need all the help I can get
.

Abdo crossed his arms and glared at me. Ingar, oblivious to
the tension between his tablemates, said: “Let me guess: you gender only the most obvious nouns correctly, you confuse the dative with the ablative, and you are completely thrown by the optative.”

Abdo’s mouth fell open.
It’s like he knows you!
he cried, and then he was speaking in Ingar’s head, where I couldn’t hear. Ingar smiled benignly, occasionally answering aloud in Porphyrian. I could follow much of what he said; I was a good listener, if nothing else, and my vivid imagination helped fill the gaps in my comprehension.

Ingar’s enthusiasm began to curdle, however. His eyes dulled and his speech slowed and slurred. Alarmed, I glanced at Abdo, only to see him staring in rapt fascination at a spot just above Ingar’s head.

Ye gods
, said Abdo.
She’s pouring into his mind right now, filling him up like a jug. A big, empty jug
.

I pushed back from the table reflexively. Ingar’s eyes unfocused and a docile smile rippled across his fleshy lips. I waited, tensed like a hare, but Ingar only blinked vaguely.
What’s she doing?
I asked Abdo.
Is she not here to speak to me?

Abdo frowned.
Not everything she does is about you. She’s been visiting Ingar for years. They must have their own things to talk about
.

Ingar’s head drifted a little to one side, like butter melting in a pan. He sighed.

Abdo and I helped Ingar to his feet, draping his heavy arms across our shoulders. Our mismatched heights meant we propped Ingar at an angle; his head lolled downhill, toward Abdo. The sailors grinned knowingly as we passed, as if we were helping our drunken comrade to bed.

Ten days later, Porphyry finally came into view, gleaming like a pearl. The city had been built into two enormous bowl-shaped depressions in the side of a double-peaked mountain. The twin branches of the river Omiga rushed out from behind it, plunging to the sea in a series of cataracts on the west side and a single, terrifying fall to the east. As our ship passed the lighthouses and entered the harbor, I began to see dark columnar trees sticking up like fingers from private gardens. Gilded statuary glinted atop the alabaster domes of temples; colonnades and porticoes, built from the purplish marble that gave the city its name, cast dramatic shadows in the afternoon sun. The city climbed vertically, terraced like the seats of an amphitheater, the eyes of the buildings fixed upon some captivating nautical comedy in the harbor below.

At least I hoped we were a comedy. That seemed preferable to the alternative.

Porphyry was not, strictly speaking, part of the Southlands, and Porphyrians would have been insulted by the suggestion. Abdo had told me more than once that his people considered Ninys, Samsam, and Goredd a backwater. Porphyry was the southernmost city-state in a vast trading network that extended to the far north and across the western ocean to countries we’d only heard the vaguest rumor of: Ziziba, Fior, Tagi.

Porphyry’s twelve founding families—the Agogoi—had settled at the mouth of the Omiga River more than a thousand years ago, believing it a strategic position for controlling trade with the Southlands. They weren’t wrong, exactly, but it took a few centuries before the Southlands were fit to trade with.

The Southlands in those days comprised dozens of chieftaincies, warring with each other and preyed upon by the dragons from the northern mountains. Eight hundred years ago, the legendary Queen Belondweg united Goredd under one banner and drove the dragons back for the first time. It didn’t last; the dragons returned in force in the Great Wave.

That conflict ended with the Age of Saints, six hundred years ago, when Saints walked the Southlands and taught us to fight dragons more effectively. There followed a two-hundred-year lull, the Peace of St. Ogdo, during which Ninys and Samsam were established. The dragons, however, were only biding their time.

The last four centuries had cycled surges and restorations, war and incomplete peace. Comonot’s Treaty had brought the first real peace since St. Ogdo’s.

All that time, the Porphyrians had watched and waited, apart from our turmoil. They’d made peace with the dragons as
soon as they’d landed and could not fathom why we did not do likewise—or why we had not sensibly settled somewhere dragons didn’t care to hunt. The Porphyrians traded intermittently with the chaotic south and more steadily with the distant north and west, and while this hadn’t made them wildly wealthy, they’d lived comfortably enough to dabble in philosophy and scholarship and culture.

Only in the last forty years, with the stability of Comonot’s peace and the Southlands needing to rebuild, had Porphyry finally begun to see the trade its founders had hoped for. I’d seen Porphyrian merchants at Goreddi markets my entire life; many had settled in the Southlands to run that end of their import-export operations.

Porphyry’s ancient treaty with the Tanamoot meant that the city had a very different relationship with dragonkind. The community of exiles that Eskar had been courting, trying to persuade them to Comonot’s cause, could never have existed in Goredd. We liked our dragons transient and clearly marked with bells. Even Porphyrian attitudes toward ityasaari, if Abdo’s upbringing in the temple was any indication, spoke of a very different dragon-human dynamic. I was eager to see it in action.

Abdo was just plain eager. The moment his city had drifted into sight, he had climbed onto the capstan and bounced with uncontainable joy.

Movement in the sky caught my eye. Dark shapes swooped and dove over the mountains behind the city. They darted in and out of sight, possibly dozens, too swift to count or keep track of. I tapped Abdo’s shoulder and pointed. “Dragons!”

Abdo shaded his eyes with his good hand.
Those will be our exiles. They’re permitted to fly at the four corners of the year, during our Games of the God and Goddess at the solstices and equinoxes
.

“Don’t tell me we made it here by midsummer!” I cried. Somewhere in all my illness, I’d lost count of the days.

Ingar, with us at the prow, questioned a scurrying sailor. “Midsummer was five days ago, he says. This is the last day of the games.”

We’d reached Porphyry only five days after Kiggs and Glisselda had planned that we should, months ago, in the comfort of Castle Orison. We’d had enough mishaps and unexpected detours that I could hardly believe we’d been so timely.

I just hoped other things the Queen and prince hadn’t been able to plan for—the progress of the dragon civil war, and whether it would move south into Goredd—had not yet made our journey superfluous. I’d have to find the Goreddi embassy as soon as I could, contact the Queen, and learn what was happening.

Our ship put into the eastern harbor, at the cargo docks. I’d been shy about inflicting my Porphyrian on the crew, but as we waited for the gangway, I spoke to the young boatswain standing near us. “Have you the knowing for where we are able to find this desired thing, the Goreddi pigeon coop?”

The lad goggled at me.

What are you doing?
asked Abdo, elbowing me with unnecessary severity.

I’m asking him where the Goreddi embassy is located
, I said.

No, you’re not
, said Abdo.
Besides, I’m sure he doesn’t know. You may have stupid-foreigner license, but that can be stretched only so far
.

Stupid-foreigner license?
I asked.

Porphyrians expect you to speak badly and have the manners of a goat; we find it amusing when you do, and a little disappointing when you don’t. The sailors are subtly leaning closer, even now, to hear what absurd thing you’ll say next
.

I glanced over my shoulder. An elderly sailor grinned toothlessly at me. Embarrassed, I turned back to the gangway, which was almost down.

“I do need to find the embassy,” I told Abdo. “And we should get you to the temple of Chakhon and this priest, Paulos Pende.”

Later
, he said, looking ready to bolt off the ship as soon as he could.
I want to go home first and rest
.

Ever since he’d quit the temple—for reasons he still hadn’t made clear to me—Abdo had lived with his aunt Naia, an accountant for a shipping firm. Her apartment was near the harbor market, in a neighborhood called Skondia. Abdo’s grandfather, who would’ve returned to Porphyry months ago, was to have informed Naia we were coming.

The harborside was full of sailors, stevedores, cargo cranes, crab pots, and fishwives; gulls aggressively darted around, stealing scraps. Abdo slipped through the churning crowd, as skilled and nimble as the gulls. He was hard to follow, not least because I didn’t know which way we were supposed to be going. I’d spot him beside a piled net, lose him, glimpse him near a guano-coated pylon, lose him again, and then see him materialize beside a musician playing some sort of miniature oud. We worked our way east, finally emerging into emptier, shadier, gently sloping streets lined with apartment blocks.

I had not been keeping track of Ingar, hoping maybe he’d trip over a fishing line and fall into the sea, but he’d doggedly kept up with us.

The bottom floor of Aunt Naia’s apartment building held stores and businesses; Abdo led Ingar and me to the stairs, wedged between a bustling tavern and a net-repair shop. A waft of cardamom tea and frying greeted us; a baby’s cry echoed down the stairwell. Neighbors, descending in the dimness, exclaimed happily at Abdo and stared at Ingar and me. His aunt’s flat was at the top, four floors up.

A short, rounded woman, dressed in a practical yellow tunic and trousers, answered Abdo’s knock. Her chin-length brown hair was divided into countless tiny twists tipped with blue and green ceramic beads. A pair of gold-rimmed spectacles perched upon her nose; a stylus protruded from behind her ear. She beamed at the sight of Abdo and held out her arms to him.

Abdo burst into tears and collapsed against her bosom. She staggered back a step in surprise, then held firm, kissing his head, holding him tightly, waiting out the tears. “Sweet bean,” she muttered into his hair knots. “What’s this, then?”

Abdo dried his eyes and held up his left hand. He did not, in fact, need bandages anymore—the wound had healed—but he still kept it wrapped. Aunt Naia’s brow creased and she began speaking too rapidly for me to follow. Abdo tried to answer with hand signs—I’d seen him sign to his grandfather—but his injured hand hindered him.

Aunt Naia signed back. I wondered how long it would take Ingar, who watched intently, to work out this finger language.

“Forgive me,” said Naia suddenly, addressing Ingar and myself in simpler Porphyrian. “You are Abdo’s friends. Please come in. Guests are from the gods.”

Ingar, at least, knew how to answer: “A generous heart is the truest temple.”

Aunt Naia ushered us into the apartment’s main room, modestly furnished with a backless couch, a low table piled with ledger books, a charcoal brazier, and a number of small carpets and cushions. A square window with a view of the harbor let in the lingering evening light; curtains closed off the entrances to three other rooms.