I came to on the daybed in Viridius’s solarium; its windows, still intact, had been out of range. The sun had slipped behind the mountains, but the sky was still pink. Dame Okra sat beside me, adjusting the wick of a lamp in her lap, illuminating her froggy face from below. She noticed me stirring and said, “How do you feel?”
It was an unusually tender inquiry, coming from her. My ears were ringing and my head throbbed, but for her sake I bravely said, “Not too awful.”
I’d have something good to report to the Queen, at least, whenever I could stand up again.
“Of course you’re fine,” Dame Okra snapped, setting the lamp on a side table. “Abdo has been nearly hysterical, thinking he’d hurt you.”
I tried to sit up, but my head weighed a thousand pounds. “Where is he?”
Dame Okra waved off my question. “You’ll see him soon. I want a word with you first.” Her pink tongue darted over her lips. “This is ill advised, this whole endeavor.”
I closed my eyes. “If you dislike the idea of linking minds, you don’t have to—”
“Indeed, I never shall,” she said impatiently. “But it’s not just that. It’s this plan of yours to bring the half-dragons together.” My eyes popped open again; she leered at me. “Oh yes, I know what this is really about. You think you’re going to find a family. We shall come together under one roof—a warm communing of weird ones!—and all our problems will be solved.” She grinned toothily and batted her eyes.
I bristled at her mockery. “I want to help the others,” I said. “I’ve glimpsed their sorrows. You and I have had it easy compared with some.”
It was her turn to chafe. “Easy? Oh yes, with my scaly tail and boyish figure, what could be simpler? I was never kicked out of my mother’s house at fifteen, never had to live on the streets of Segosh or steal to eat.” Her voice was rising to a teakettle shrill. “Bluffing my way into secretarial work was a snap; marrying the old ambassador was trivial, with my fabulous looks. Outliving him—well, no, that really was easy. But persuading our ruling count to let me take over as ambassador, when no female had ever held the post before, was as easy as wetting the bed.” She was shouting now. “Or falling out a window. Why, anyone could do it, because it was nothing.”
She glared at me, her eyes bulging fiercely.
“Peace, Dame Okra,” I said. “You thought you were alone in all the world. Surely it has been a relief to discover others like yourself?”
“Abdo and Lars are good enough,” she conceded. “And you’re not so terrible.”
“Thank you,” I said, trying to mean it. “But would you begrudge the others? Some never got past your streets-of-Segosh stage and are still stealing to eat.” She opened her mouth, but I anticipated her: “And not because they’re stupid or less deserving than you.”
She puffed air through her lips. “Maybe,” she said. “But do not make the mistake, Seraphina, of supposing that suffering ennobles anyone. Some may be lovely, but most will be hurt beyond your skill to heal.” She stood up, adjusting her false bosom. “You’re going to bring back some genuinely unpleasant people. You know my gift involves prognostication, and I’m telling you, this will end unhappily. I have foreseen it.”
“Noted,” I said, a chill creeping up my spine. Could she see that far into the future?
She turned to go, but looked back superciliously. “When it all goes to the devil—and it will—at least I shall have the pleasure of saying I told you so.”
On that optimistic note, she left me to my headache.
By the next morning, the headache had dissipated and my enthusiasm restored itself. Maybe it didn’t matter whether my mind-fire was hidden away, or if I could participate in the invisible wall; I was connected to our far-flung brethren in a way that Abdo, Dame Okra, and Lars were not. It would be my job—my honor, truly—to find them and bring them home.
Before bed, I had written to Glisselda about Abdo and Lars’s success. A page boy interrupted my breakfast with an invitation to the Queen’s suite. I put on a nicer gown than I would have otherwise and went to the royal family’s wing of the palace. The guard, who was expecting me, let me into an airy sitting room with high ceilings, salon couches around a tiled hearth, and draperies of gold and white and blue. At the back of the room before the tall windows stood a round table set for breakfast, and behind it sat Glisselda’s grandmother, Queen Lavonda, in a wheeled chair. Her spine was bent; her skin looked pale and fragile, like crumpled paper. Her grandchildren sat on either side, chatting encouragingly at her. Glisselda spooned porridge into her grandmother’s mouth, open like a baby bird’s, and then Kiggs tenderly wiped her chin.
The old Queen had never recovered from the events of midwinter. Imlann’s poison had been neutralized, according to the best dragon physicians Comonot could procure. They saw no other cause for her continued illness, though one had hypothesized a series of small strokes, deep in her brain. Being dragons, they had rejected outright the notion that grief might be a cause, but the human population of Goredd believed otherwise. Queen Lavonda had lost all her children—Kiggs’s mother, Princess Laurel, had died years before, but Prince Rufus and Princess Dionne had been murdered in short succession at midwinter, the latter killed by the same poison the Queen had survived.
The old Queen had nurses and servants in abundance, but I’d heard that Kiggs and Glisselda insisted upon feeding their grandmother breakfast each day. This was the first I’d seen of it, and I was filled with sorrow for them and awe at how much they loved and honored the old woman, even when she was no longer fully herself.
I approached and gave full courtesy.
“Seraphina!” cried Glisselda, handing the spoon over to her cousin and wiping her hands. “Your report was so encouraging that Lucian and I have started planning. You’re to leave the day after the equinox, if this thaw persists.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. That was six days away.
“We’ve been trying to estimate how long your journey will take,” said Kiggs, his eyes on his grandmother. She rolled her brown eyes toward him, her lips quivering anxiously. He patted her speckled hand. “If you took six weeks in Ninys and another six in Samsam, you might arrive in Porphyry just after midsummer.”
“Officially, you’d be an emissary of the Goreddi Crown, authorized to solicit and acquire promises of supplies and troops for our defense,” said Glisselda, retucking the napkin under her grandmother’s chin. “Not that we don’t trust dear Count Pesavolta and the Regent of Samsam to do their parts. But the personal touch is so much nicer.”
“Your main objective is to find the ityasaari,” said Kiggs.
“What if I can’t?” I said. “Or can’t find them quickly enough? Is it more important to stay on schedule or to bring them home?”
The royal cousins exchanged a look. “We must decide case by case,” said Kiggs. “Selda, we need to ask Comonot to authorize the use of a thnik for Seraphina.”
“And by ‘we’ you mean me,” Glisselda said crossly, putting her hands on her hips. “That saar! After the argument we had yesterday over Eskar’s—”
The old Queen began to weep softly. Glisselda was on her feet at once, her arms around her grandmother’s frail shoulders. “Oh, Grandmamma, no!” she said, kissing her white hair. “I’m cross at that infuriating old dragon, not you. Not Lucian, either, see?” She went up behind Kiggs and hugged him, too.
“Honestly, Lucian, we should get married tomorrow,” said Glisselda out of the side of her mouth. “Let her have one happy thing in her life before she dies.”
“Mm,” said Kiggs, scraping the last porridge out of the bowl, scrupulously not looking at me.
Queen Lavonda, alas, was inconsolable. “We will continue this later, Seraphina,” said Glisselda apologetically, ushering me toward the door. I gave full courtesy again, wishing there were something I could do.
I turned my mind to what they’d told me. Six days was sooner than I could have anticipated. I headed back toward my suite, mentally taking stock of my travel clothing. I had none. I hoped there was time to have some made.
I detoured to visit Glisselda’s seamstress, who directed me to the seamstresses of the lower court. “There’s eight of them, maidy, so they can stitch eight gowns at once.”
I went down to the artisans’ wing, but my feet slowed as I approached the seamstresses’ workroom. I didn’t want eight gowns, not if I was going to go careening all over the Southlands on a horse. I retraced my steps and, after some hesitation, knocked on a different door.
A slight, balding man answered, spectacles clamped to his narrow nose, a measuring ribbon around his neck like a scarf.
“The ladies’—” he began, but I didn’t let him finish.
“How fast can you make riding breeches?” I asked. “I’ll want them well padded.”
The tailor smiled slightly and stood aside to let me in.