An hour passed, and then two. I paced the edge of the clearing, where there seemed to be no filaments. Josquin went to update the Eight and returned.
Abdo said at last, She’d like to come with us—she’s curious—but she’s also timid. She doesn’t go among people. I don’t want to bring her out before she’s ready. I should stay here overnight.
I began to protest, but he said, I’m perfectly safe. Anyway, you can’t reach me to protect me or bring me out. Go back to Meshi and call in at the palasho. I’ll still be here in the morning, I promise.
I didn’t like it; the Eight, when Josquin and I returned to the main road and told them, liked it even less. After much discussion, we left a contingent of four—led by Nan—encamped at the edge of the clearing, out of range of Glimmerghost’s defenses. The rest of us went back to town and called on Baronet Meshi as per our original intention. I checked in on Abdo so often that he began to get irritated with me, and I was so distracted that I failed to answer a direct question from the baronet about our old Queen’s failing health. Josquin, with his usual aplomb, smoothed over my inadequacies and kicked me under the table.
Abdo interrupted my sleep early the next morning, saying, Would you bring more bread with you when you come back? Blanche loves it, but she never got the hang of baking it herself.
She had a name. That didn’t quite soothe my crankiness at being awakened so early.
We brought bread that day—and the next. Baronet Meshi gave us a tour of his sulfur mines; I twitched with impatience all the way through. Finally, on the third morning, Abdo informed me that Blanche was willing and ready to travel, if we could find some way to transport her. She was frightened of horses.
Horses and humans. I stopped myself from suggesting that she ride one of her giant spiders back to Segosh.
Josquin visited his brother heralds at an inn west of Meshi, and returned to the palasho in an hour with a post carriage and an elderly herald named Folla, who would escort Blanche to Dame Okra’s. I must have looked skeptical, because the old man took my hand between his palsied ones and said in heavily accented Goreddi, “I care for her like my own granddaughter. One week, fast coach, she is safe in Segosh. My promise.”
We followed the coach on horseback and met Nan’s party and Abdo at the point on the forest road where Abdo had gone in search of the mossy hut. I saw no sign of our hermit until Abdo sidled up to a pine and pointed. She was sitting on a branch, higher than I would have thought she could climb, watching us all carefully.
Don’t worry, she’ll come down, said Abdo. She wanted to look everyone over first.
She didn’t look to me like she had any intention of descending, the way she clutched at the trunk with one arm, her other hand pressed to her mouth. Abdo, at the base of the tree, looked up at her and smiled, holding out a hand. Her face relaxed as she gazed at him, and she began to nod quaveringly. She took a deep breath, as if bracing herself, and climbed down the tree trunk like a squirrel.
Blanche carried a filthy leather satchel on a strap slung over her bony shoulder. You should see the machines she’s leaving behind, madamina, said Abdo, his eyes following her admiringly. She’s brought only one of her spiders, bundled up in her bag.
Only one spider. Dame Okra was going to be so pleased.
Blanche balked at the sight of the carriage, but Abdo took her hand in his and led her around the coach. They examined the wheels and springs. She whimpered at the horses, but Abdo patiently showed her how they were hitched up and couldn’t get to her. He patted one horse’s velvet nose. Blanche came no closer, but her suspicious squint eased a little.
She has to hold the carriage with her mind, Abdo explained to me. She touches things with her soul-light and makes them a part of herself. I wish you could see how the whole thing glows. I bet she could move it without the horses.
Old Folla popped his head out of the carriage, and Blanche gasped in surprise and clutched at Abdo. The lad smiled exaggeratedly, as if showing her a better way to react to Folla. She nodded, violet eyes solemn, and then spoke a laugh: “Ha. Ha.”
Blanche stepped toward me, not meeting my eyes, and gave courtesy like a noblewoman. “Thank you,” she said in carefully enunciated Goreddi.
Why is she thanking me? I asked Abdo in confusion.
She’s been alone out here for thirty years, said Abdo, patting Blanche’s hand. Since she was a child and her scales came in and her mother’s husband—Lord Meshi himself—threw her out of the house.
Blanche took one last, regretful look back toward the ridge, then leaned down and kissed Abdo’s forehead. Abdo, never taking his eyes off her, handed her into the carriage.
I wish I could go with her, said Abdo fretfully as the carriage rolled away.
I need you here, I said.
Blanche’s ghostly face appeared in the carriage’s back window. Abdo waved. She speaks five languages; she hid them down deep because she had no one to talk to. She was loved once, and educated, and then thrown away like garbage.
I watched the carriage disappear around a bend in the road and felt a pang. There but for the grace of Allsaints went any of us, even here in Ninys. It was wonderful that we could help her; this was exactly what I had hoped to accomplish.
Abdo wriggled his hand into mine and smiled encouragingly up at me. Come along, madamina. We still have a painter to find.
I contacted Dame Okra over the thnik that night, for the first time, to let her know Blanche was coming. “Congratulations on finding another one,” drawled Dame Okra. “I didn’t think you could. Nedouard and I have a bet on. He wins only if you find both.”
“You’re getting along with him better now, I hope,” I said.
She snorted. “I recovered my spoons, at least. Since he’s under my roof now, I can steal everything back while he’s out. He doesn’t sell my silver, just magpies it away in the crannies of his room.”
I rubbed my forehead in perplexity but inquired no further. She’d found a way to make peace with him; that would have to be good enough.
My companions and I plunged onward through the Pinabra and four days later reached Vaillou, a woodcutters’ village on sandy bottomland. St. Jobertus’s shrine, erected over a sacred spring, was the largest building. Across the chapel’s pinewood ceiling, in purples and greens, a mural showed Jobertus healing the sick and aiding the poor. His compassionate eyes reminded me startlingly of Nedouard’s.
She’d finished her work here and moved on.
A priest crept up silently and spoke to Josquin. I caught Count Pesavolta’s name. The priest rummaged in his violet cassock and handed a scrap of palimpsest to Josquin.
“I wondered when the message I sent ahead would pay off,” Josquin said, crossing the chapel toward me, “but I never anticipated this. Listen: ‘I hear there’s a reward for information leading to my whereabouts. I’m at Montesanti Monastery. Bring the money, or don’t come at all.’ ” Josquin tapped the parchment against his hand. “That’s a bit unfriendly.”
“Do you know the monastery she mentions?” I asked.
“Indeed,” he said, pursing his lips. “It’s famous, although I’ve never been up there. The rock is a daunting climb, and they don’t lower the ladder for just anyone.”
I was thrilled to have such a definite lead, and feeling quite confident after Nedouard and Blanche, despite the tone of Od Fredricka’s note. Three days passed quickly, over hilly, piney ground, until we arrived at the base of a weathered cliff.
“This is it,” said Josquin, shading his eyes to look up. “The monastery was carved into the living rock. There’s the entrance porch.”
I made out what looked like a colonnaded cave entrance, halfway up the bluff.
Ye gods, said Abdo, standing on his horse. I see her. She shines ferociously.
Two ropes dangled from the entrance. Moy tugged on one, and a bell tinkled a long way off. From the other rope hung a slate and chalk; Josquin wrote in Ninysh, We’re here for Od Fredricka. Two pale monks, summon
ed by the bell, peered down at us; they reeled up the slate, bumping it against limestone outcroppings, vines, and gnarled roots.
After several minutes, they sent the slate back down. One may ascend. No more.
“I should go,” I said. Josquin frowned at this; Captain Moy muttered and shifted uneasily. “They’re just monks,” I said, folding my arms. “They’re not going to hurt me.”
“It’s St. Abaster’s Order, a Samsamese import,” said Moy. “Stricter than our homegrown brothers. They won’t welcome a woman, or a …” He gestured at my wrist. My scales were hidden under my long-sleeved doublet, but I rubbed my arm self-consciously.
He was right, of course. I could have quoted the relevant lines of scripture, and it was St. Abaster’s dragon-killing trap we were trying to re-create. I had no illusions about this order’s friendliness toward my kind.
“Just keep quiet and take care,” said Josquin. “The Samsamese aren’t as tolerant as we Ninysh.”
As you Ninysh believe yourselves to be, said Abdo, echoing my thoughts.
Above us, something hurtled over the ledge. We stepped back reflexively, but it was a rope ladder, unrolling as it fell. The lowest rungs didn’t touch the ground. Josquin handed me Count Pesavolta’s scrip, the promised reward; I tucked it into my doublet and started to climb. The ladder swung, grinding against the limestone, making the rungs hard to grasp. My knuckles were thoroughly chafed by the time I reached the top. Two brown-robed monks grabbed my elbows and hauled me up.
The porch resembled a shallow, flat-bottomed cave with four decorative columns placed at intervals across its wide mouth. The monks had shaved their heads in a peculiar tonsure, bald but for a square patch at the crown. They wiped their gloved hands uneasily on their cassocks, as if I had contaminated them. I wordlessly followed them toward the back of the cave, through an oaken door reinforced with iron bands, and up a torch-lit corridor into the rocky heart of the cliff. The arched doors along the corridor were closed; it was eerily quiet. Perhaps St. Abaster’s was a silent order.
At the end of the corridor, a stone staircase spiraled up into darkness. One monk took a torch from its wall sconce, handed it over, and pointed. These two clearly did not intend to accompany me any further. I hesitated, then mounted the steep stairs.
I climbed five or six stories at least, and was dizzy and lightly winded when I reached a heavy door at the end. A light push didn’t budge it. I leaned into it with all my weight, and it groaned open into an airy and painfully bright chamber. I blinked and squinted until I discerned tall, glazed windows, a tile floor, wrought-iron candelabra, scaffolding. This was a freestanding octagonal chapel at the top of the bluffs.
I set my torch in a sconce beside the door and looked around for Od Fredricka. Upon the scaffolding perched a woman sketching on the bare plaster, a chunk of charcoal in her hand. She had already drawn an oval as tall as she was, a bulbous nose with flaring nostrils, a curving mouth, and long-lobed ears. I watched her add a pair of cruel eyes.
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?