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, summoned 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.