Free Seraphina by Rachel Hartman Page A

tip of her tongue protruding from her mouth. “What if they held court or built cathedrals or wrote poetry?”
    “Would you let them live?”
    “I might. How ugly are they, though, really?”
    I grinned. “Too late: you’ve noticed they’re interesting. You understand them when they talk. What if you could become one, for short periods of time?”
    They writhed with laughter. I felt they’d understood, but I underscored my point: “Our survival depends not on being superior but on being sufficiently interesting.”
    “Tell me,” said Glisselda, borrowing Millie’s embroidered handkerchief to wipe her eyes, “how does a mere assistant music mistress know so much about dragons?”
    I met her gaze, clamping down on the tremor in my voice. “My father is the Crown’s legal expert on Comonot’s Treaty. He used to read it to me as a bedtime story.”
    That didn’t adequately explain my knowledge, I realized, but the girls found the idea so hilarious that they questioned me no further. I smiled along with them, but felt a pang for my poor, sad papa. He’d been so desperate to understand where he stood, legally, for unwittingly marrying a saarantras.
    As the saying went, he was neck deep in St. Vitt’s spit. We both were. I curtsied and took my leave quickly, lest this Heavenly saliva somehow become apparent to the girls. My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.

I t was, as always, a relief to retire to my rooms for the evening. I had practicing to do, a book on Zibou sinus-song I’d been dying to read, and of course a number of questions for my uncle. I seated myself at the spinet first and played a peculiar dissonant chord, my signal to Orma that I needed to talk. “Good evening, Phina,” boomed the basso kitten.
    “Fruit Bat has started wandering around the garden. I’m concerned that—”
    “Stop,” said Orma. “Yesterday you were offended when I didn’t greet you, but today you leap straight in. I want credit for saying ‘Good evening.’ ”
    I laughed. “You’re credited. But listen: I’m having a problem.”
    “I’m sure you are,” he said, “but I have a student in five minutes. Is it a five-minute problem?”
    “I doubt it.” I considered. “Can I come to you at St. Ida’s? I’m not comfortable discussing this through the spinet anyway.”
    “As you wish,” he said. “Give me at least an hour, though. This student is particularly incapable.”
    As I was bundling up, I realized I had done nothing about Basind’s blood on my cloak. The dragon’s blood had long since dried but was still shiny as ever. I slapped at it, causing a blizzard of little silver flakes. I beat as much of the stain out as I could and swept the gleaming detritus into the fireplace.
    I took the Royal Road, which descended in wide, graceful curves. The streets were dark and silent, lit only by a quarter moon, lighted windows, and occasional Speculus lanterns that had been set out early. Down near the river, the air was sweet with woodsmoke and rich with someone’s garlicky dinner, then dense with the reek of a backyard cesspit. Or maybe offal—was I near a butcher’s?
    A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the open street ahead of me. I froze, my heart pounding. It shambled toward me, and the choking odor grew stronger. I coughed at the stench and reached for the little knife I kept sheathed in the hem of my cloak.
    The dark figure raised its left hand toward me, palm up as if to beg. It raised a second left hand and said, “Thlu-thlu-thluuu?” A wisp of blue flame played about its beaky mouth as it spoke, illuminating its features for a moment: slick scaly skin, spiky crest like a Zibou iguana, bulging conical eyeholes that swiveled independently of each other.
    I exhaled. It was nothing but a panhandling quigutl.
    The quigutl were a second species of dragon, much smaller than the saar. This one was about my height, tall for a quig. The quigutl could not change