Gravity

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Seraphina

Copyright: Rachel Hartman

Orma did not know what to expect when a distraught maidservant begged him to climb up to the tower, but it was certainly not this. His feet froze in the doorframe as he caught sight of Seraphina in her tutor's arms, being held over the stone wall. The child was pale, her brown eyes enormous in her face, her white feet showing underneath her dress. Her shoes must have fallen onto the street below.

Zeyd's sharp-boned face was utterly expressionless as she glanced over her shoulder. "Ah, Scholar Orma," she said. "As you can see, I am conducting a physics lesson."

Seraphina's small body went limp and her face relaxed. He was almost positive that the emotion she showed was relief. She thought he was there to defend her.

That, for reasons no dragon logic had ever prepared him to understand, sent his own human body into such a paroxysm of rage that he could scarcely breathe. He wanted to burst out of his skin, then and there, blast fire and brimstone into Zeyd's arrogant face and roast her to a crisp. How dared the Censors test him in such a blunt, invasive, and frankly unimaginative manner? How dared they still doubt him? But most of all, how dared they frighten the child?

Later, meditating in his room, it would considerably disturb him that the child was his first priority. In this moment, however, he burned.

What followed was possibly the most impressive display of cognitive architecture any dragon had ever performed. It was almost a pity he couldn't write a thesis about it – at least not without exposing Seraphina and her father, which would defeat the entire purpose.

He kept his face neutral. He took deep breaths. He forced himself to remain Scholar Orma, sane and rational, untouched by any kind of excessive emotion, least of all for this human child in his colleague's hands. He smothered the fire with wet towels, funneled away the smoke and double-locked the gate.

"An unusual teaching method," he heard himself say calmly.

Horror flooded back into Seraphina's face.

"It seems to be working, however. Seraphina?" She shook the child a little, making her gasp. "At what rate do objects fall downward?"

"Th-thirty-two … feet … per second?"

Saints' bones, as Claude would say. How many other five-year-old human children would even be capable of speech at this point, let alone an accurate response? Trust Linn's daughter for something like this.

Respect. He respected the child. That had to be it. Acting to protect an intelligent, promising young person from a senseless death would be a very logical thing to do. Except that he must not look at her; one more glimpse of the horrified betrayal in those brown eyes (the eyes he'd shared with Linn) and his locks and firebreaks might not hold out.

"You had better not let Counselor Dombegh hear of this," he said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms with studied indifference.

"Will you tell him?" Zeyd challenged.

"According to the Treaty, I am duty-bound to report all illegal activities by a fellow saar. Threatening to drop children into the street would surely count as illegal."

"Is that your only reason, Scholar?" Subtle contempt twisted the edge of Zeyd's thin lips.

Orma's left hand, the one hidden inside his jacket sleeve, clenched so tightly that his nails drew silver blood.

"What other reasons could there be?"

"Emotional attachment, perhaps?"

"To a human? Certainly not."

Smooth. Controlled. Ruthless. He could hear Imlann's voice coming out of his mouth, and did not know whom he loathed more for it: his father, the Censors, or himself.

"I see," said Zeyd.

Without more ado, the bells on her shoulders jingling with the effort, she heaved Seraphina back inside the shelter of the wall and dropped her on the floor like a sack of grain. The child collapsed, sobbing, in a way that should have disgusted him, but did not.

"It seems that my colleagues were mistaken about you, Orma." This time, the properly minimal expression on Zeyd's face was a touch of respect. "Under circumstances such as yours, your control is commendable."

Orma saluted her gravely, and she took advantage of the gesture to link arms with him and lead him to the stairs. He could still hear Seraphina crying, and see her in his mind's eye, her hair blown wild by the wind and her wet face pressed into her knees. But even one turn of his head to look at her would ruin all his hard work.

You see, he thought to the memory of his sister. You were not the only one in this family with a genius for human art. If you were a musician, I am an actor. The Golden Plays are nothing to this.

Once he had finally extricated himself from Zeyd by distracting her with a new mathematical treatise, he went back to the base of the tower to find his niece. Five years old, barefoot, swollen-eyed and disoriented, she had climbed down all these stairs under her own power. The thing he called respect, and which was really so much more, squeezed his throat like a claw.

"You idiot," he snapped at her. "Don't you know better than to trust a dragon?"

In that uncanny way that humans had, Seraphina seemed to pick up everything he hadn't dared to say or even feel. She did not accuse him, or ask questions. She threw her tiny arms around his legs and hugged him tight. He was fully aware of what Linn would have called the irony of the situation, a dragon telling a half-dragon not to trust their species. Still, it was true. How many dragons ever trusted each other, after all?

Linn had trusted him, though. So, despite everything, did her daughter.

Glancing in every direction for Zeyd, Orma finally allowed himself to do what he had wanted to do from the first. He picked up his little niece and, inevitably as the fall of shoes in thirty-two feet per second, walked away with her in the direction of her room.

"You cannot walk on cold tiles without shoes," he told her as her head settled against his shoulder. "These human bodies fall ill so easily." Her sigh of contentment was his only reply.

If anybody saw them, that would be his excuse.