Shadow Scale (44 page)

Kiggs raised his hand; Melaye pointed the staff at him. “Our faction requests a private consult,” he said.

“Granted,” said Melaye haughtily. Around the circle, the Agogoi raised their fans, speaking privately with their neighbors. My friends turned around on their stools and drew their seats closer together. I knelt and leaned in.

“If the knights are sailing back to Goredd tonight, I should be on that ship with them,” said Kiggs quietly. “I’m needed at home.”

“Understood,” said the old saar.

“I’m not sure you do,” said Kiggs. “I don’t want to leave with these negotiations unresolved. We can’t coordinate a military campaign with that kind of uncertainty. You have to agree on a price. I need to know you’ll be going up the Omiga.”

He and Comonot stared at each other for some moments.

Eskar said, “Ardmagar, stop being stubborn. Give Porphyry what it wants.”

“It wants too much!” hissed Comonot.

“How much are dragons worth?” said Eskar. “Every passing day means more death, means the Old Ard and their pernicious ideology gaining ground. Bend like a willow, Ardmagar. We must learn to do this if we’re to survive.”

The Ardmagar turned red and his lips worked against each other. I half believed smoke might come out his ears. Somehow he swallowed it down. Our party turned their stools back around. Comonot addressed Melaye in a thin, tight voice, like a furious bassoon. “Speaker, I must get to the Kerama. I agree to your last proposal, though it was hardly more reasonable than your first. I will take every saarantras who wishes to accompany me. Your city will supply us, and we will leave as soon as all is in order.”

Melaye’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “I have your word, Ardmagar, by Dread Necessity, and you have mine. We must write up our agreement and sign it.” She pointed her staff at a matron, who went to the door and began giving orders to the guard outside.

Comonot bowed sharply and sat down again. “Bend like a
willow,” he whispered to Eskar out of the side of his mouth. “You made it sound so simple.”

“It was simple,” said Eskar, unperturbed.

“Indeed. I bent and changed everything. This is going to have consequences.”

A phalanx of secretaries entered the courtyard, carrying portable writing desks and piles of parchment. I leaned down level to Comonot’s ear and whispered, “What did you agree to, Ardmagar?”

He rolled his eyes. “The Porphyrians are to have access to quigutl devices—not merely the right to own and use them, but the right to trade them.” He shook his head. “The Southlands will never be the same. I have altered your whole world in the blink of an eye, for my own gain. I’m not easy with that.”

Kiggs was getting to his feet. “Thank you even so, Ardmagar,” he said, patting the old saar’s broad shoulder. “We’re off.”

Comonot’s eyes flicked from my face to the prince’s. “I will see you both in Goredd, then, when I clasp your hands across the smoking ashes of my enemies.”

“Isn’t that what you’re hoping to avoid by sneaking up the Omiga?” Kiggs said.

Comonot considered. “Yes, but I liked the sound of those words. Interesting.”

Kiggs bowed. The Ardmagar grabbed his head and kissed his cheeks, performed the same awkward operation on me, and turned back to the business of formalizing his agreement. Six secretaries were poised to take dictation, making six copies at once.

We collected Maurizio and left the Vasilikon; Kiggs knew a
way out that didn’t involve crossing the Assembly chamber again. When we emerged into the bustling Zokalaa, Maurizio shaded his eyes and said, “We need to leave before we’re trapped here. Sunset might be too late. We load supplies and then we’re off—assuming we didn’t knock a big hole in the ship. I don’t care to contemplate that possibility.”

“Understood,” said Kiggs, his face drawn. “Seraphina and I have only to fetch our things. We’ll see you soon.” He clapped Maurizio on the shoulder; the knight bowed and took off toward the harbor.

Kiggs ran a hand over his face and exhaled. “By St. Clare, I can’t believe Eskar talked the Ardmagar into that. Those negotiations could have lasted weeks. Comonot was an immovable object against Melaye’s unstoppable force.” He tried to smile. “Shall we go together to gather our belongings, or shall I meet you at the harbor? The latter is faster, but the former might be pleasanter.”

An idea that had almost formed earlier (had it only been that morning?) came suddenly upon me in full force, and once I had realized it, I couldn’t unrealize. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” I half whispered, hating what I was about to say. “I can’t travel back to Goredd with you.”

Kiggs’s brows shot up. “What?” His gaze flitted back and forth, as if he could only bear to look into one of my eyes at a time. “I thought you’d given up on gathering the Porphyrian ityasaari. And … and Selda misses you.”

“Not just Selda,” I said, reaching for his hand. He squeezed my fingers. “But Uncle Orma is …” My voice broke. “I might find him if I go with Comonot and Eskar. I have to try.”

Emotion played across Kiggs’s face like light upon water, illuminating the surface and the deeps, the known and the unknown. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine. The busy Zokalaa flowed around us; the sun inched through the sky.

“Of course you do,” he said at last. “And I have to go home and help Selda, and this is how the world runs, pulling us apart over and over again.”

“I’m so sorry—” I began.

“Not for loving your uncle, I hope,” said Kiggs, drawing back and wiping my cheek with his thumb. “I’m not away yet. Walk with me to House Malou.”

We took the hill in silence, the callous breeze cavorting between us. The doorman recognized the prince and let us in; the empty corridors echoed as we walked. Kiggs had unpacked but little, so it took only a minute to gather his belongings. I helped him carry his chest to the atrium, where he paid a scullion to haul it the rest of the way to the ship.

We lingered in the street, emptied by the midday heat. I steeled myself for the goodbye that was drawing relentlessly closer, but Kiggs said in a voice almost comically grim, “I’d like to have seen the Bibliagathon just once.”

I knew of a nearby public garden with a view. I led Kiggs through the sweltering streets, up a slightly overgrown gravel path, and to the end of the garden, where the shrubbery parted and the Bibliagathon appeared below us, its dome gleaming in the noonday sun, its courtyards in cool blue shadow.

“It’s as big as a cathedral,” sighed the prince. “I’ll have to come
back. Maybe we’ll come back together.” He lightly brushed my hand with his fingers.

“Orma and I used to dream of that,” I said. My throat tightened painfully, and I could only whisper, “Orma might not be Orma when I see him next.”

Kiggs gripped my hand tightly then. “That has been happening all around you,” he said quietly. “Not just to Orma. Jannoula has been altering the minds of friends. It must feel like the world is all on shifting sand.”

“Promise me you won’t listen to her or let her into the city,” I said. “Keep her out of Goredd altogether, if you can.”

“Of course,” he said, raising my hand a little, clasping it between both of his. “You know I speak for Selda, too. You have two stalwart friends on guard against her. Let that comfort your heart, as mine is comforted.”

I questioned with my eyes. He smiled, leaning in a little, and said, “Because I found you again. However strenuously the world pulls us apart, however long the absence, we are not changed for being dashed upon the rocks. I knew you then, I know you now, I shall know you again when you come home.”

And that was the last thing he said to me before he left. I could not bear to watch him sail away. When I returned to Naia’s, the emptiness in the harbor was palpable still.

It would be a week before Comonot and the exiles were supplied and ready to go. I sent the Ardmagar a note that very evening, informing him that I would accompany him to the Tanamoot. I got a reply within the hour—from Eskar—inviting me to a meeting at the Vasilikon the next day to discuss the logistics and timing of the dragon exodus.

That night, however, a Samsamese armada slipped silently into position around the harbor while Porphyry slept. The barricade, seen in the morning light, comprised some twenty-five ships stretched in a line between Porphyry and the island of Laika. This was more force than a meager boatload of knights merited. The Samsamese admiral came ashore and holed up with the Assembly in the Vasilikon.

Our meeting was postponed until the following day. I spent
the unexpected free time with some of Abdo’s cousins, watching the flotilla from the seawall.

The next morning, as I crossed the Zokalaa, I saw the nuncio on the steps. I worked my way through the pressing crowds in front of the Vasilikon and heard him announce: “The Samsamese demand the return of their countrymen and burned ship; Mother Porphyry happily returns them. They demand the Goreddi knights, but Mother Porphyry harbors none. Now they ask for our ityasaari.”

That got my attention. I knew one person in Samsam interested in gathering ityasaari. I craned my neck, trying to see around coiled hairdos.

“Mother Porphyry denies this request!” boomed the nuncio, and the crowd cheered. “Citizens, we scorn this feeble Samsamese blockade. Our navy could crush them for their insolence, but we choose not to. The Assembly asks the citizenry for kindness and patience in these irritating times. There will be no disruption of produce from the Omiga Valley. Fisherfolk unable to work due to the blockade will be compensated.…”

This blockade would surely complicate Comonot’s departure. The exiles were supposed to take their natural form and fly up the falls of the Omiga, but it was hard to hide two hundred dragons taking off. Word would get back to Josef, and who knew what he would do with the information?

When I reached Speaker Melaye’s office, Eskar, Comonot, Ikat, and other leaders of the saarantrai had arrived, but the meeting had not yet started. I drew Comonot aside and quietly told
him my concerns. He scoffed. “Regent Josef wouldn’t tell the Old Ard we’re coming. Why would he help them?”

“It wouldn’t be to help them so much as to hurt you,” I insisted. “If dragons fight each other, he loses fewer Samsamese lives per dragon death. Even Josef couldn’t deny the logic of that.”

“Hatred is never logical,” said Comonot pompously. “He wants to fight dragons himself, not shift the war back to the mountains.”

Speaker Melaye was listening in. “If the Regent hears that Porphyry is friendly with dragons,” she said, “will he use that as a pretext to strike at us?”

“We’ll fly by night,” said Comonot, shrugging. “I’m not worried.”

I worried enough for both of us.

It wasn’t just the blockade that worried me, of course. Abdo was no better. I hated to leave, not knowing what would become of him, but there was nothing I could do for him if I stayed. There seemed to be nothing anyone could do.

Early upon the seventh morning of the blockade, a messenger brought a note from Comonot stating that we would leave at sunset. I handed the note to Naia at her accounting desk, and she straightened her spectacles to read it.

Before she could say anything, Abdo’s alcove curtain was whipped aside and Abdo, breathing like he’d just run up a flight of stairs, staggered out. Naia was at his side in an instant. I hung
back warily, but could tell from the way he smiled at his auntie that he was himself.

How are you feeling?
I asked.

Abdo pulled out of Naia’s embrace and wobbled unsteadily.
She had me trapped inside my own walls; I couldn’t even sleep or wake without her say-so. But then suddenly she … she just left. I don’t know why
. He shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe it.
Her hook is still in me, and she’ll attack again, I’m sure. Can you take me to Pende, quickly, before she comes back?

A word of explanation to Naia, and we were out the door. Naia carried Abdo on her back, and we hurried toward the Zokalaa and the temple of Chakhon.

Upon the steps of the temple, Abdo made Naia put him down. He signed as well as he could with one immobile hand; she understood him. She nodded tearfully, kissed his cheeks, and said, “Go. I’ll be waiting right here.”