Seraphina

  Pender and Foughfaugh carried long polearms with a peculiar hook on each end, angled in such a way that it did not hinder them using the pole for vaulting. They flipped and cartwheeled, leaped and spun, exchanged poles in midair, and viciously attacked the hayrick with their hooks.

  Sir James undertook to educate us. “These hooks we call the slash. Now we’ll show you the punch. Squires! Harpoons!”

  The squires exchanged their hooks for a more spearlike weapon, demonstrating its use on the poor, abused hayrick.

  “Dragons are flammable,” said Sir James. “They developed their flame for use against each other. They don’t cook their meat with it, after all. They fear no other beast—or didn’t, until we learned to fight. Their hide is tough but it burns, given enough heat for enough time; their insides are volatile, which is how they flame in the first place.

  “The key to dracomachia is setting the monster on fire. We’ve got pyria—St. Ogdo’s fire—which clings to them and is not easily extinguished. One good puncture and their blood whistles out like steam. Set that ablaze, and they’re done.”

  “How many knights made up a unit?” asked Kiggs.

  “Depended. Two slash, two punch, fork, spider, swift. That’s seven knights, but we had pitchmen flinging pyria and squires running weapons … Fourteen was full complement, although I’ve taken out a dragon with as few as three.”

  Kiggs’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, to have seen it in action, just once!”

  “Not without armor, lad. The heat was unbearable—and the stench!”

  The squires clambered up on each other’s shoulders, flipping and leaping over top of the hayrick. I found their precision and strength inspiring. Being banished and having little else to do, they’d clearly spent a lot of time practicing. We should all be as dedicated to our art.

  “Sweet St. Siucre!” I exclaimed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Kiggs, alarmed by my sudden beeline for the horses.

  I fished around in my mare’s saddle pack until I found the diagram Lars had given me. Kiggs apprehended my thought at once and helped me unfold the parchment against the side of the horse. We stared at the clyster-pipe ballista, then at each other.

  “The bladders would be for pyria,” I said.

  “But how would you ignite it?” puffed a breathless voice behind us, which turned out to be Squire Foughfaugh.

  “It would be self-igniting, Maurizio. Look,” said Kiggs, pointing to a matchlock mechanism I hadn’t understood.

  “Clever,” said Maurizio. “The squires could have operated that—anyone could have. Put the knights out of a job, almost.”

  Sir James came to see what the fuss was about. “Humbug. Machines limit mobility. Hunting dragons is not a question of brute force, or we’d be knocking them out of the sky with trebuchets. It’s an art; it takes finesse.”

  Maurizio shrugged. “Having one of these on our side couldn’t have hurt.”

  Sir James sniffed disdainfully. “We might have used it as bait. Nothing lures a dragon like an odd contraption.”

  The snow was blowing harder now; it was past time to go. We made our farewells. Maurizio insisted on helping me onto my horse. I cringed, irrationally fearing he’d discern my scales. “It’s such a relief after all these years to learn that you recovered from your fright,” he said in a low voice, giving my hand a squeeze, “and that you grew up so pretty!”

  “Were you worried?” I asked, touched.

  “Yes. What were you, eleven? Twelve? At that age we’re all gawky, and the outcome is always in doubt.” He winked, smacked my horse’s hindquarters, and waved until we were out of sight.

  Kiggs led the way back to the sheep track, and I urged my horse to keep up.

  “You appear not to have gloves,” said Kiggs as I pulled up beside him.

  “I’ll be all right. My sleeves almost cover my whole hand, see?”

  He said nothing, but pulled off his own gloves and handed them to me with a look that told me I didn’t dare refuse. They were prewarmed; I hadn’t realized how frigid my fingers were until I put them on.

  “All right, I’m an idiot,” said Kiggs after we’d ridden a few miles in silence. “I had fully intended to scoff at your fear of riding after dark, but if it keeps snowing like this, we’re not going to be able to make out the road.”

  I had been thinking the opposite: the road now stood out, two parallel white lines where snow filled in the wagon tracks. It was nearly dark, however. This was the longest night of the year, and the heavy cloud cover was working toward making it even longer. “There was an inn at Rightturn,” I said. “The other villages were too small.”

  “Spoken like someone unaccustomed to traveling with a prince!” he laughed. “We can commandeer any manor house along the way. The question will be, which one? Not Remy, unless you want to spend the evening with Lady Corongi and her cousin the reclusive duchess. If we can make it all the way to Pondmere Park, that would minimize our travel time in the morning. I have duties to attend to tomorrow.”

  I nodded as if I did too. I’m sure I did, but I could not remember a single one.

  “I’ve been meaning to tell you all day,” said Kiggs, “that I had some additional thoughts on being a bastard, if you’d like to hear them.”

  I could not stop myself laughing. “You … really? All right then.”

  He reined his horse back even with mine. He had not put up his cloak hood, and there was snow in his hair. “You’ll find me eccentric, perhaps, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that. No one ever asks.

  “My father was a Samsamese admiral. My mother, Princess Laurel, was the youngest daughter of Queen Lavonda and was, according to legend, a bit headstrong and spoiled. They ran off when she was fifteen years old; it was as dreadful a scandal in Samsam as here. He was demoted to freighter captain. I was born on dry land but was often at sea as a baby. They didn’t take me on their final voyage: the day before they were to set sail from the Ninysh port of Asado they met Dame Okra Carmine, who persuaded them to let her take me to Goredd, to meet my grandmother.”

  I had considered her short-range prognostication talent a bit silly; I was wrong.

  He stared up at the clouds. “They perished in a terrible storm. I was five years old, lucky to be alive, but feeling quite at sea myself. I didn’t even speak Goreddi. My grandmother didn’t take to me right away; Aunt Dionne hated me instantly.”

  “Her own sister’s child?” I cried.

  He shrugged; his cloak flapped in the wind. “My very existence was an embarrassment to everyone. What were they to do with this unexpected child, his low-class manners—even for a Samsamese—and his mortifying ethnic surname?”

  “Kiggs is a Samsamese name?”

  He smiled ruefully. “It’s not even Kiggs; it’s Kiggenstane. ‘Cutting-stone.’ Somebody up the family tree was a quarryman, apparently. But everything worked out. They got used to me. I showed them I was good for a thing or two. Uncle Rufus, who spent years at the court of Samsam, helped smooth my way.”

  “You looked so sad, praying for him this morning,” I blurted out.

  His eyes glittered in the twilight; his breath made mist in the cold. “He’s left a tremendous hole in the world, yes. Only my mother’s death compares. But you see, this is what I’ve been aiming toward, the thing I keep imagining myself telling you because I feel you’ll understand it.”

  I held my breath. The silent snow came down all around us.

  “I have such mixed feelings about her. I mean, I loved her, she was my mother, but … sometimes I’m angry with her.”

  “Why?” I asked, but I knew. I’d felt exactly that. I could barely believe he was about to utter it aloud.

  “Angry with her for leaving me so young—you may have felt that too, about your mother—but also, to my mortification, angry with her for falling in love so recklessly.”

  “I know,” I whispered into the icy air, hoping and fearing that he would hear me.

  “What kind
of villain begrudges his own mother the love of her life?” He gave a self-deprecating laugh, but his eyes were all sadness.

  I could have reached right across and touched him. I wanted to. I gripped the reins tighter and stared at the track ahead.

  “You’re not a villain,” I said. Or else we were two villains in a pod.

  “Mm. I rather suspect I am,” he said lightly. He went silent; for some moments there was only the crunch of hooves in snow and the squeaking of cold saddle leather. I looked over at him. The frosty air had reddened his cheeks; he blew into his hands to warm them. He gazed back at me, his eyes deep and sorrowful.

  “I didn’t understand,” he said quietly. “I judged her, but I didn’t understand.”

  He averted his eyes, tried to smile, broke the moment of strangeness. “I won’t fall prey to the same destructive impulsiveness, of course. I’m on my guard against it.”

  “And you’re engaged, anyway,” I added, trying to sound flippant because I feared he might hear my heart beating, it was pounding so violently.

  “Yes, that’s a nice assurance against the unexpected,” he said, his voice rough with some emotion. “That, and faith. St. Clare keeps me to my rightful course.”

  Of course she did. Thanks for nothing, St. Clare.

  We rode on in silence. I closed my eyes; snow blew against my cheeks, stinging like sand. For a moment I let myself imagine that I had no dragon scales and he was unfettered by promises already made. There in the freezing darkness, under the endless open sky, it might well have been true. No one could see us; we might have been anyone.

  It turned out someone did see us, however, someone with an ability to see warm objects in darkness.

  I felt a hot blast against my skin, smelled sulfur, and opened my eyes to see my grandfather in all his hideous reptilian hugeness land on the snowy road ahead.

  My horse reared, and I was on the ground, flat on my back in the snow, not a whisper of breath left in me.

  Kiggs was off his horse in an instant, sword drawn, making himself a wall between me and the brimstone blackness, the muscular furl of wing against sky. He reached back left-handed to help me to my feet, groping around in the air; I forced myself to sit up, put my hand in his, pull breath back into my lungs. He heaved me to my feet and we stood there, hand in hand, and faced the dread behemoth, my grandfather.

  To my utter shock I recognized Imlann, even as darkness rapidly descended. It wasn’t Orma’s nonsensical description; it came from my mother, from the memory box, which had given a smoky belch inside my mind. I knew the contours of his spiny head; the arch of his snaky neck resembled Orma’s.…

  Orma. Neck. Right. I fumbled at my neck, left-handed because Kiggs still had my right, seeking the cord to Orma’s earring. Kiggs stepped forward a little, shielding me again, and said, “You are in violation of Comonot’s Treaty—unless you have the documents to prove otherwise!”

  I grimaced. It was easy to think of dragons as feral file clerks when there wasn’t an enormous, choleric specimen snorting sulfur in your face. I found the earring, flipped its tiny switch, and tucked it back into my clothes.

  Orma was going to kill me; I hoped he’d help me first.

  The dragon screamed, “You smell of saar!”

  He meant me. I cringed. Kiggs, who didn’t understand Mootya, cried, “Stand down! Return to your saarantras immediately!”

  Imlann ignored that, fixing his beady black eyes on me and screeching, “Who are you? Which side are you on? Have you been spying on me?”

  I didn’t answer; I didn’t know what to do. Imlann thought I was a saarantras. Would Kiggs assume the same if he learned that I knew Mootya? I kept my eyes on the snow.

  Kiggs waved his sword. A lot of good that was going to do.

  “You feign deafness,” cried my grandfather. “What can I do to make you hear? Shall I kill this irritating little princeling?”

  I flinched, and the saar laughed, or what would have been a laugh from a human. It was more like crowing, a horrid hoot of victory. “I bit a nerve! Surely you can’t be so attached to a mere human? Perhaps I will not kill you after all. I still have a friend on the Board of Censors; maybe I’ll let him turn you inside out.”

  I had to do something; I could think of only one thing to try. I stepped forward and said, “It’s you the Censors should be after.”

  Imlann recoiled, rippling his serpentine neck sideways and emitting a blast of acrid smoke from his nostrils. Kiggs pulled my arm and cried, “What are you doing?”

  I couldn’t reassure him. A saarantras wouldn’t have, and that’s what I had to appear to be if we were to bluff Imlann long enough for Orma to get here.

  If Orma was even coming. How far was it? How fast could he fly?

  “I’ve contacted the embassy,” I cried. “Eskar is on her way, with a committee.”

  “Why don’t you transform, and we’ll have this out properly?”

  It was a frighteningly reasonable question. “I obey the law, even if you do not.”

  “What’s to stop me from killing you this instant?”

  I shrugged. “You apparently don’t know about the device implanted in my head.”

  The dragon cocked his head to one side, flaring his nostrils, appearing to consider; I hoped he reached a conclusion favorable to letting me live a bit longer. I added: “It’s in my tooth. Flame me, or hit me with any percussive shock, and it will explode, destroying you too. If you bite off my head and swallow it, my tooth will continue to signal from inside your stomach. The embassy will track you down, General Imlann.”

  He looked mystified; he’d never heard of such devices—he couldn’t have; I was making this up—but then, he’d been away from the Tanamoot for sixteen years. I lifted my chin haughtily, though I was shaking, and said, “The game is up. Surrender now and tell us everything. Where have you been hiding?”

  That broke the spell. Smugness crept over him. I only knew it for smugness from my maternal memories; all my human eyes saw were the spines at the base of his head shift their angle. He said: “If you don’t know that, you know nothing worth knowing. I shall leave you to your disgusting infatuation. Plans are unfurling, all in their proper time; I shall let them. We shall meet again, and sooner than you expect.”

  He turned with a serpentine ripple, swiping at us with his spiky tail, ran forward, and launched himself into the air. He made a wide, low circle in the sky, presumably scanning for embassy dragons, then flew swiftly south, disappearing in the clouds.

  My knees trembled and my head throbbed, but I was elated. I could barely believe that had worked. I turned toward Kiggs; I must have been wild-eyed with relief.

  He backed away, his expression closed, saying, “What are you?”

  St. Masha and St. Daan. I’d saved us, but now I had to pay for it. I raised my hands as if in surrender. “I am what I ever was.”

  “You’re a dragon.”

  “I’m not. By Heaven’s hearthstone, I’m not.”

  “You speak Mootya.”

  “I understand it.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “I am very, very smart.”

  He didn’t question that; I would have. He said, “You’ve got a draconian device. It is illegal for humans to be in possession of quigutl-built communication machinery—”

  “No! I’ve got nothing! It was a bluff.”

  He was breathing heavily now, delayed-onset panic finally catching up with him. “You bluffed him? A Porphyrian double ton of fire and brimstone, fangs like swords, claws like … like swords! And you just … bluffed him?”

  He was yelling. I tried not to take it personally. I folded my arms. “Yes. I did.”

  He ran his hands roughly through his hair. He bent double as if he might vomit, scooped up some snow, rubbed it over his face. “Sweet Heavenly Home, Seraphina! Did you think about what might have happened to us if that hadn’t worked?”

  “No better plan presented itself.” Heavens, I sounded as cold as
any dragon.

  He had dropped his sword at some point; he picked it out of the snow, wiped it on his cloak, and resheathed it, his eyes still wide and shocked. “You can’t just … I mean, brave is one thing. This was madness.”

  “He was going to kill you,” I said, my chin quivering. “I had to do something.”

  Damn propriety. Forgive me, St. Clare.

  I stepped forward and took him in my arms. He was exactly my height, which surprised me; my awe of him had made him seem taller. He emitted a whimper of protest, or maybe surprise, but wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair, half weeping, half scolding me.

  “Life is so short,” I said, not sure why I was saying it, not even sure if that was really true for someone like me.

  We were still standing there, clinging to each other, our feet ice-cold in the snow, when Orma landed on the next hilltop, followed closely by Basind. Kiggs lifted his head and stared at them, big-eyed. My heart fell.

  I’d told him I had no devices. I’d lied right to the prince’s face, and here was the proof: the dragon I’d called, and his dim-witted sidekick.

  Speculus, for us Goreddis, should be spent in contemplation of one’s sins and shortcomings. It’s the longest night of the year, representing the long darkness of death for the soul who rejects the light of Heaven.

  It was certainly the longest night I have ever lived through.

  Kiggs, of course, had drawn his sword again, but it hung from his hand in a desultory manner. It had been useless against one dragon; it was merely token resistance against two.

  “We’re not in danger,” I said, trying to reassure him but fearing my good intention was as futile as his sword. “It’s Orma, and behind him is Basind. I didn’t call Basind.”

  “But you did call Orma? With that device you don’t have?”