It had been so long since Tess had worn a gown that she felt unpleasantly exposed. The breeze sneaked up underneath and chilled her.
“I wish I could let out your hair,” Gaida fussed, running her fingers through Tess’s wavelets. “A gabled cap would hide it. You don’t want to give the court conniptions.”
“You don’t know what she wants,” said Josquin.
Tess was surprised to find herself agreeing with Gaida in this case. The rules had rankled when she’d had no choice, but she was no longer a young, dependent lady-in-waiting, cowed by her elders. She’d walked the earth alone and helped them that needed it. She could deign to dress up or not, could face down courtly rules and say, Very well, I comply—this once.
She didn’t want a gabled cap, though. “Where might I find a broad-brimmed hat, preferably with a plume?”
Three haberdashers and a chunk of winter savings later, she had what she wanted: a hat reminiscent of the one Countess Margarethe had worn to Jeanne’s wedding nearly a year ago. Tess could only afford a long, sharp pheasant’s tail feather, not an ostrich plume, and a crown of felt, not velvet, but it pleased her. The hat and boots (which took polish gratefully, like Tess once took wine) gave off such an air of competent decisiveness that one might easily ascribe the same qualities to the person bookended between them.
She rose early, leaving Josquin tangled in the bedsheets, and dressed with keen awareness of his eye upon her. Before she left, she perched gently on the edge of the bed and rubbed his leg. “Do you want to come along and see her?” Tess asked quietly.
“What?” said Josquin with a start, trying to look as if he’d just woken up and hadn’t been brooding on anything. “No, no. This is a sisterly reunion. I’d be in the way.”
Tess quirked a tiny smile, her heart contracting sympathetically, because she understood in that moment that he was not, in fact, over her sister, and that she couldn’t really blame him. “Can I help you get dressed, at least?”
“No,” he said, grumpy with her now. “Go. Stop worrying about me.”
She kissed his cheek and was off, up the hill toward the palasho. The rising sun crowned the buildings in gold. Tess hummed as she walked, enjoying the street beneath her feet. Its face had been hidden by snow and mud all winter, but now, with the blue arcing overhead and the cobbles dry and clean, seeing the Road was like seeing an old friend after many months apart.
She was expected at the palasho; a guard escorted her through the gate and handed her off to a footman at the palace proper. The footman led Tess to the count’s library, where Seraphina waited in a window seat, reading.
Tess almost laughed. She’d been away long enough to find her sister owlishly adorable.
To Seraphina’s credit (because it wasn’t a given), she closed her book, looked at Tess, and smiled before she spoke. “You’re looking well.”
“I am well,” said Tess, choosing a chair upholstered in prickly embroidered silk. The arms were gilded curlicues, ribbons, and bunches of grapes, high Ninysh baroque. Tess sat with her legs crossed at the knee, one boot swinging, hat tilted just rakishly enough, and grinned.
Here she was. Here they both were. It was delightful.
“How’ve you been?” said Tess.
“Fine,” said Seraphina.
“Still keeping the small talk extra small,” said Tess, chuckling.
Seraphina ignored this. She could be such a dragon sometimes. “I hear you’ve had some success as a naturalist,” she said. “Word of the great serpent reached St. Bert’s by thnik. The Ninysh Academy was quick to boast, our Collegium quick to envy—and to judge. It’s unfortunate that they killed it.”
More unfortunate than Seraphina could know. Tess felt a shadow cross her heart.
“I know you’re the one who found it,” said Seraphina, setting her book on the seat beside her. “Kenneth brought me the report, saying, ‘Who else would purposely go by the name Tes’puco?’ We had a chuckle, remembering you as a small child, the whole house a stage for some drama, directing us hither and thither. We imagined you bossing around masters and World Serpents alike, until we heard that it had died.”
Tess’s hands fidgeted in her lap, the only outward indication of the guilt roiling through her innards. “I never imagined they’d hunt it down and kill it.”
Seraphina pierced her with a glance. “What did you think would happen, exactly?”
Tess squirmed. It wasn’t an accusation, but it felt like one. “I thought that when they saw it, they’d be moved. They’d…understand,” she said. That sounded feeble, even to Tess.
“Understand what?” Seraphina’s sternness did not waver.
How could Tess explain what had happened in that cavern? Telling Seraphina was more intimidating than telling the Academy—there was history and precedent to overcome. One did not simply tell Seraphina personal things. She wouldn’t care; she would logic you to death.
But Tess hadn’t walked this far to be cowed again. She would tell the truth, and Seraphina could understand, or not.
“Have you ever experienced something so far beyond words that you couldn’t explain it?” said Tess. “And the more you tried to tell people, the more frustrated you felt, because nobody understands unless they’ve been through it themselves?”
Tess had meant these as rhetorical questions, but Seraphina answered: “I have. Twice.”
“W-wait, what? When?” asked Tess.
“During the war, when I turned my mind inside out and called St. Pandowdy from the swamp,” said Seraphina. “And again, to a somewhat lesser extent, when I gave birth.”
Tess’s breath caught in her throat. Could they really both have had encounters with the numinous? She could never have imagined this.
“I found my vocation in that cave,” said Tess at last. “Side by side with a monk.”
“Tell me,” said Seraphina, in almost a whisper.
“I feel called,” said Tess, feeling it again, groping around for words to clothe it in. “To walk into the world, to see what’s needed, and do it. To uncurl myself and respond.”
Tess held her breath, afraid Seraphina would scorn the very idea—what reasonable person wouldn’t?—but her sister nodded solemnly. She was taking this seriously.
“Well, then, I may just have a need for you to respond to,” said Seraphina. “Word of all this has reached the Tanamoot. The dragons, who denied the very existence of World Serpents, are now quick to point talons of blame. They condemn the killing and mean to find the other serpents themselves, ostensibly to protect them.”
Tess raised an eyebrow at ostensibly. Seraphina nodded minutely.
“It’s unclear what they intend. Dragons aren’t usually gentle with things they don’t understand or can’t control. It’s possible they don’t so much object to the killing as to the fact that they had no access to the corpse. Or that they’d hoped to kill the World Serpents themselves, quietly, before humankind found them.
“In any case, Queen and Ardmagar agree on one thing: this can’t happen again. And here is where your Queen has an assignment for you.”
Tess sat up straighter, as if the Queen herself had entered the room and not just her name.
“Goredd can’t permit another serpent to be slaughtered,” said Seraphina. “For the creatures’ own sakes, yes, but also because the dragons are roaring. Our treaty shelters Ninys, to some extent, but it certainly doesn’t apply to the Archipelagos or the Southern Ocean.”
Tess’s heart leaped. “You want me to find another one.”
“Countess Margarethe has new funding and means to sail after the Antarctic serpent again,” said Seraphina. “Selda wants you on that boat.”
Tess laughed, a short, bitter bark. “The Queen does understand that I was horrible and the countess hates me? She won’t want me along.”