Bitterblue

32



THE NEXT DAY, Po and Raffin left before dawn, taking their horses into the east city and quietly across Winged Bridge. Katsa followed soon after, leaving Bann, Helda, and Bitterblue to stare at one another gloomily over breakfast. Giddon still hadn't returned from Silverhart.

Then, in late morning, Darby ran up her tower stairs and dropped a folded note onto her desk. He sniffed. "This seems urgent, Lady Queen."

The note was written in Giddon's hand, unciphered. Lady Queen, it said, please come to your stables as soon as possible and bring Rood. Be discreet.

She couldn't think why Giddon would ask for such a thing, and doubted it could be for any cheerful reason. Well, at least he was safely back.

Rood followed her to the stables like a timid dog, folded in on himself, as if trying to make himself disappear. "Do you know what this is about?" she asked him.

"No, Lady Queen," he whispered.

Stepping into the stables, she couldn't spot Giddon anywhere, so she chose the closest row of stalls and began to walk down them past horses that stomped and snorted. Around the first corner, she saw Giddon in the door of a faraway stall, bending over something on the ground. Another man was with him—Ornik, the young smith.

Rood let out a sob beside her.

Giddon heard, turned, and came to them quickly, blocking their advance. With one arm outstretched to stop Bitterblue and his other arm practically holding Rood upright, he said, "It's dreadful, I'm afraid. It's a corpse that's been in the river for some time. I—" He hesitated. "Rood, I'm sorry, but we think it's your brother. Would you know his rings?"

Rood collapsed to his knees.

"It's all right," Bitterblue said to Giddon as he looked at her helplessly. She put her hand on his arm. "You deal with Rood. I know his rings."

"I'd rather you didn't have to see it, Lady Queen."

"It will hurt me less than it hurts Rood."

Giddon spoke over his shoulder to Ornik. "Stay with the queen," he said, unnecessarily, for Ornik had already come forward, smelling of vomit.

"That bad, Ornik?" said Bitterblue.

"It's very bad, Lady Queen," Ornik said grimly. "I'll show you his hands only."

"I would like to see his face, Ornik," she said, not knowing how to explain that she needed to see all there was to see. Just so that she would know, and possibly understand.

And yes, she recognized the rings constricting the skin of the horrible balloon hand, though the rest of him was unrecognizable. Barely human; fetid; the sight of him barely sufferable. "Those are Runnemood's rings," she told Ornik. And this answers the question of whether Runnemood is the only person targeting truthseekers. This body wasn't setting any fires in the city—she counted days in her head— four nights ago.

He would have died anyway, if he'd been convicted of his crimes. So why is seeing him dead so horrible?

Ornik covered the body with a blanket. When Giddon came to stand beside them, Bitterblue looked back and saw that Darby had come and was kneeling with an arm around Rood. And beyond them, Thiel, hovering, with empty eyes, like a ghost.

"Is there any way of knowing what happened?" Bitterblue asked.

"I don't think so, Lady Queen," said Giddon. "Not with a body that's been in the river as long as this one seems to have been. As long as three and a half weeks, I suppose, if he died the night he disappeared, right? Rood and Darby are both speculating that it was suicide."

"Suicide," she repeated. "Would Runnemood have committed suicide?"

"Unfortunately, Lady Queen," said Giddon, "there's more I need to tell you."

"All right," Bitterblue said, noticing that behind Giddon, Thiel had turned and was gliding away. "Just give me a minute, Giddon."

She ran to catch up with Thiel, calling his name.

He turned to her woodenly.

"Do you also think it was suicide, Thiel? Don't you think he must have had enemies?"

"I can't think, Lady Queen," said Thiel in a voice that cracked and strained. "Would he have done such a thing? Had he gone so mad? Perhaps it is my doing," he said, "for letting him run off that night, alone. Forgive me, Lady Queen," he said, backing away in confusion. "Forgive me, for this is my doing."

"Thiel!" she said, but he pushed himself away.

Turning back, Bitterblue saw Giddon down another row of stalls, hugging a man she'd never seen before, hugging him like a long-lost cousin. And now Giddon was hugging the horse that had apparently just come in with the man. Giddon had tears running down his face.

What on earth was going on? Was everyone mad? She focused on the tableau of Darby and Rood on their knees. Runnemood's wrapped corpse lay on the floor beyond them, and Rood was weeping inconsolably. Bitterblue supposed one might over a brother, no matter who the brother had grown up to be.

She went to him to tell him she was sorry.

THE MAN GIDDON had been hugging was the son of Giddon's housekeeper. The horse Giddon had been hugging was one of Giddon's own horses, a mare who'd been on an errand in town when Randa's raid had begun. No one had felt the need to tell Randa's men that their inventory of Giddon's stables that day was off by one horse.

All the people had gotten out of the buildings. All the horses had survived, as had all the dogs, down to the smallest runt puppy. As for Giddon's things, little was left. Randa's men had gone through the place beforehand, collecting items of value, then carefully set the sort of fire that would produce the maximum destruction.

Bitterblue walked with Giddon back into the castle. "I'm so sorry about all of it, Giddon," she said quietly.

"It's a comfort to talk to you about it, Lady Queen," he said. "But do you remember that there was more I needed to tell you?"

"Is it about your estate?"

It was not about Giddon's estate. It was about the river, and Bitterblue's eyes widened as she listened.

The river at Silverhart was full of bones. The bones had been discovered at the same time as Runnemood's body, for, as it happened, the corpse had gotten hung up on what turned out, upon investigation, to be a reef of bones. Ice had then formed around the body and frozen solid, anchoring it into place. All of this had occurred at a bend in the river where water pooled, slowing nearly to a stop. It was a deep spot the townspeople tended to avoid, for the very reason that dead things accumulated there, fish and plants washing up to the banks, lingering until they rotted away. It was a putrid place.

The bones were human.

"But how old are they?" Bitterblue asked, not understanding. "Are they the bodies Leck burned on Monster Bridge?"

"The healer didn't think so, Lady Queen, for he could find no signs of burning, but he admitted to having little experience with reading bones. He wasn't comfortable speculating about their age. But it's possible they've been collecting there for some time. If people hadn't had to row in among them to free Runnemood's corpse, they wouldn't have been discovered. No one makes a point of going to this stretch of river, Lady Queen, and no one steps into the pool, for the footing there is dangerous."

And now Bitterblue was thinking about something else entirely: Po and his hallucinations. The river is swimming with the dead. Ashen and her embroidery. The river is his graveyard of bones. "We need to bring the bones out," she said.

"I understand that there are underwater caverns in this place, Lady Queen, with quite deep water. It may be difficult."

A memory opened to Bitterblue like a crack of light. "Diving for treasure," she muttered.

"Lady Queen?"

"According to something Saf said to me once, he knows a bit about recovering things from the ocean floor. I expect he could extrapolate to a river floor. Can one do such a thing in cold weather? He is discreet," she added grudgingly, "with information, anyway. Not so much with his behavior."

"At any rate, I'm not sure discretion is an issue here, Lady Queen," said Giddon. "The whole town knows about the bones. They were discovered just before I arrived, and I'd heard them talked about several times before I even reached my contact. If we have a boneretrieval operation going on in the river half a day's ride from the city, I don't see it staying quiet."

"Especially if we decide to search other parts of the river as well," Bitterblue said.

"Should we be doing that?"

"I think they're the bones of Leck's victims, Giddon," she said. "And I think there must be some in the river here, near the castle. Po couldn't sense them when he looked for them specifically, but when he was sick and hallucinating, his Grace swelling and distorting, some part of him knew. He told me the river was swimming with the dead."

"I see. If Leck dumped bones into the river, I suppose we could find them practically to the harbor. How well do bones float?"

"I have no idea," Bitterblue said. "Perhaps Madlen knows. Perhaps I should make a team of Madlen and Sapphire and send them out to Silverhart. Oh, my shoulder aches and my head is splitting," she said, stopping in the great courtyard, rubbing at her scalp under its too-tight braids. "Giddon, how I wish a few days would go by without any upsetting news."

"You've too much to worry about, Lady Queen," Giddon said quietly.

"Giddon," she said, caught by his tone, and ashamed of herself for complaining. Looking into his face and seeing a kind of desolation in his eyes that he was managing to keep out of his voice. "Perhaps this is a useless, unhelpful thing to say," she said. "I hope it will not be insulting. But I want you to know that you're always welcome in Monsea and you're always welcome at my court. And if any of your people have no employment, or wish, for whatever reason, to be elsewhere, they're all welcome here. Monsea is not a perfect place," she said, taking a breath, clenching her fist to ward off all the feelings that rose with that statement. "But there are good people here, and I wanted you to know."

Giddon took her small, clenched fist in his hand, raised it to his mouth, and kissed it. And Bitterblue was lit up inside, just a little bit, with the magic of knowing she'd done a small thing right. Oh, to feel that way more often.

BACK IN HER office, Darby told her that Rood was in bed, being looked after by his wife and, supposedly, bounced on by grandchildren, though Bitterblue couldn't imagine Rood being bounced on by anything without breaking. Darby did not react well to the news of the bones. He blundered away and, as the hours went on, became a bit erratic in his gait and his speech. She wondered if he was drinking at his desk.

It had never occurred to Bitterblue to inquire before this exactly where Thiel kept his rooms. She only knew they were on the fourth level, northish, though obviously not within Leck's maze. That evening, she asked Darby for more specific directions.

In the correct hallway, she consulted a footman, who stared at her with fish eyes and pointed wordlessly at a door.

Somewhat unsettled, Bitterblue knocked. There was a pause.

Then the door swung inward and Thiel stood before her, staring down at her. His shirt was open at the throat and untucked. "Lady Queen," he said, startled.

"Thiel. Did I bring you out of bed?"

"No, Lady Queen."

"Thiel!" she said, noticing a small patch of red above one of his cuffs. "You're bleeding! Are you all right? What happened?"

"Oh," he said, looking down, searching his chest and arms for the offending spot, covering it with his hand. "It's nothing, Lady Queen, nothing except my own clumsiness. I'll see to it immediately. Would you—would you care to come in?"

He pulled the door fully open and stood aside awkwardly while she passed through. It was a single room, small, with a bed, a washstand, two wooden chairs, no fireplace, and a desk that seemed far too small for such a large man, as if he must knock his knees against the wall when he used it. The air was too cold and the light too dim. There were no windows.

When he offered her the better of the straight-backed chairs, Bitterblue sat, uncomfortable, embarrassed, and unaccountably confused. Thiel went to the washstand, turned his injured side away from her, rolled up his sleeve, and did something or other with pats of water and bandages. A stringed instrument stood in an open case against the wall. A harp. Bitterblue wondered if, when Thiel played it, its sound reached all the way to Leck's maze.

She also saw a bit of broken mirror on the washstand.

"Has this always been your room, Thiel?" she asked.

"Yes, Lady Queen," he said. "I'm sorry it's not more welcoming."

"Was it—assigned to you," Bitterblue asked carefully, "or did you choose it?"

"I chose it, Lady Queen."

"Do you never wish for a larger space?" she asked. "Something more like mine?"

"No, Lady Queen," he said, coming to sit across from her. "This suits me."

It did not suit him. This bare, comfortless square of a room, the gray blanket on the bed, the dreary-looking furniture did not in any way match his dignity, his intelligence, or his importance to her or to the kingdom.

"Have you been making Darby and Rood go to work every day?" she asked him. "I've never known either of them to go so long without a breakdown."

He studied his own hands, then cleared his throat delicately. "I have, Lady Queen. Though of course I could not insist it of Rood today. I confess that whenever they've asked for my guidance, I have given it. I hope you don't feel that I've been imposing myself."

"Have you been very bored?" she asked him.

"Oh, Lady Queen," he said fervently, as if the question itself were relief from boredom. "I've been sitting in this room with nothing to do but think. It is paralyzing, Lady Queen, to have nothing to do but think."

"And what have you been thinking, Thiel?"

"That if you would let me come back to your tower, Lady Queen, I would endeavor to serve you better."

"Thiel," she said quietly, "you helped us escape, didn't you? You gave my mother a knife. We wouldn't have gotten away if you hadn't; she needed that knife. And you distracted Leck while we ran."

Thiel sat huddled within himself, not speaking. "Yes," he finally whispered.

"It breaks my heart sometimes," Bitterblue said, "the things I can't remember. I don't remember that the two of you were such friends. I don't remember how important you were to us. I only remember flashes of moments when he took you both downstairs to punish you together. It's not fair, that I don't remember your kindness."

Thiel let out a long breath. "Lady Queen," he said, "one of Leck's cruelest legacies is that he left us unable to remember some things and unable to forget others. We are not masters of our minds."

After a moment, she said, "I would like you to come back tomorrow."

He looked at her with hope growing in his face.

"Runnemood's dead," she said. "That chapter is over, but the mystery is not solved, for my truthseeking friends in the city are still being targeted. I don't know how it'll be between us, Thiel. I don't know how we'll learn to trust each other again, and I know you're not well enough to help me with every matter I face. But I miss you, and I'd like to try again."

A thin line of blood was seeping through another part of Thiel's shirt, high on his sleeve. As Bitterblue stood up to go, her eyes touched on all the parts of the room once more. She couldn't shake the feeling that it was like a prison cell.

BITTERBLUE WENT NEXT to the infirmary. She found Madlen's room warm from the heat of braziers, well lit against the autumn early darkness, and, as always, full of books and paper. A haven.

Madlen was packing.

"The bones?" asked Bitterblue.

"Yes, Lady Queen," said Madlen. "The mysterious bones. Sapphire has gone home and is also readying himself."

"I'm going to send a couple soldiers from my Lienid Guard with you, Madlen, because I'm concerned about Saf—but will you keep a close watch on him too, in your capacity as healer? I don't know how much he actually knows about recovering things from water, especially in the cold, and he thinks he's invincible."

"I will, of course, Lady Queen. And perhaps when I come back, we can take a look under that cast. I'm eager to test your strength and see how my medicines have worked."

"May I knead bread once the cast is off?"

"If I'm satisfied with your progress, then yes, you may knead bread. Is this why you came here, Lady Queen? For permission to knead bread?"

Bitterblue sat on the end of Madlen's bed, beside a mountain of blankets, papers, and clothing. "No," she said.

"I thought not."

She practiced the words in her mind before speaking them aloud, worried that they might prove she was mad. "Madlen. Would a person ever cut himself," she said, "on purpose?"

Madlen stilled her rummaging hands and peered at Bitterblue. Then she shoved the mountain of things on the bed aside with one powerful arm and sat beside her. "Are you asking for yourself, Lady Queen, or someone else?"

"You know I wouldn't do such a thing to myself."

"I would certainly like to think that I know it, Lady Queen," Madlen said. Then she paused, looking quite grim. "There are no limits to the ways people you think you know can astonish you. I can't explain the practice to you, Lady Queen. I wonder if it's meant to be punishment for something one can't forgive oneself for. Or an external expression, Lady Queen, of an internal pain? Or perhaps it's a way to realize that you actually do want to stay alive."

"Don't talk about it as if it's a life-affirming thing," Bitterblue whispered, furious.

Madlen studied her own hands, which were large, strong, and,

Bitterblue knew, infinitely gentle. "It's a relief to me, Lady Queen, that in your own pain, you take no interest in hurting yourself."

"Why would I?" Bitterblue flared. "Why should I? It's foolish. I would like to kick the people who do it."

"That would, perhaps, be redundant, Lady Queen."

IN HER ROOMS, Bitterblue stormed to her bedroom, slamming, even locking the door, then yanking at her braids, yanking at her sling and her gown, tears making silent tracks down her face. Someone knocked at the door. "Go away," she yelled, stomping back and forth. How am I to help him? If I confront him, he'll deny it, then go empty, and fall apart.

"Lady Queen," Helda's voice said on the other side of the door. "Tell me you're all right in there or I'll have Bann knock the door in."

Half crying, half laughing, Bitterblue found a robe. Then she went to the door and pulled it open.

"Helda," she said to the woman who stood there imperiously, holding a key in her hands that rendered her threat a bit overdramatic. "I'm sorry for my rudeness. I was—upset."

"Mmph. Well, there's more than enough to be upset about, Lady Queen. Pull yourself together and come into the sitting room, if you would. Bann has come up with a place for us to hide your Sapphire, should things reach a crisis point with the crown."

"IT WAS KATSA'S suggestion, Lady Queen," said Bann. "Do you think he'd go willingly to a hiding place of ours?"

"Possibly," Bitterblue said. "I could try to talk to him. Where is it?"

"On Winged Bridge."

"Winged Bridge? Isn't that part of the city rather populated?"

"He's to go up onto the bridge, Lady Queen. Hardly anyone goes onto it. And it happens to be a drawbridge, did you know? On its near side it has a sort of a room—a tower—for the drawbridge operator. Katsa discovered it the first time she left for her tunnel, for her route took her across the bridge, and she had no supplies that night, remember?"

"Isn't Winged Bridge high enough that practically three fullrigged ships stacked on top of each other could pass under it with room to spare?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," said Bann mildly. "I don't expect there's ever been a need to raise the drawbridge. Which means it's a drawbridge tower no one looks at twice. It's furnished and functional, supplied with pots and pans and a stove and so on. It would be just like Leck to station a man there with no work to do, wouldn't it? His kind of illogic? But it's empty now. According to Katsa, everything is under years of dust. Katsa broke in and took a knife and a few other things, but left the rest."

"I'm beginning to warm to this idea," Bitterblue said. "It'd do Saf some good to sit in a cold room, sneezing and thinking about his mistakes."

"It's better than trying to hide him in one of our wardrobes, at any rate, Lady Queen. And it would be the first step in moving him to Estill."

Bitterblue raised her eyebrows. "You seem to have plans for him."

Bann shrugged. "Of course, we would try to help him regardless, Lady Queen, because he's your friend. But he's also a person we could use."

"I believe his own preference, if he decided to run, would be Lienid."

"We're not going to force him to go anywhere, Lady Queen," Bann said. "A person who doesn't want to work with us is no use to us. He follows his gut. It's one of the reasons he appeals to us, but we know it means he'll do whatever he likes. Tell him about the bridge, won't you? I'll go there myself one of these nights to make sure it suits our purposes. Sometimes, the best hiding places are in plain sight."

THAT NIGHT, INSTEAD of pushing herself through more embroidery, Bitterblue found herself padding to the art gallery. She wasn't sure why she did, and in her robe and slippers, no less. Helda and Bann had gone to sleep, and Giddon had his own problems. She had a vague sense of wanting company.

But Hava was nowhere to be found. "Hava?" she called once or twice, in case the girl was hiding. No response.

She ended up standing before the hanging of the man being attacked by the colorful beasts. Wondering, for the first time, if she might be looking at a true story.

A click sounded and the hanging she was staring at moved, billowed. There was a person behind it. "Hava?" she said.

It was Fox who emerged, blinking at Bitterblue's lantern. "Lady Queen!"

"Fox," Bitterblue responded. "Where on earth did you come from?"

"There's a spiral staircase that leads all the way up from the library, Lady Queen," said Fox. "I was just trying it for the first time. Ornik told me about it, Lady Queen. Apparently it runs past Lady Katsa's rooms as well, and the Council uses it sometimes for meetings. Do you think I'll ever be allowed to attend Council meetings, Lady Queen?"

"That will be for Prince Po to decide," said Bitterblue evenly, "and the others. Have you met any of them, Fox?"

"Not Prince Po," said Fox, then went on to talk about the others. Bitterblue only half attended, because Po was the one who mattered. She wished she'd had Po chat with Fox before he'd gone. And she was also distracted because something else entirely had captured her thoughts: She was seeing, in her mind, a succession of hidden entrances behind wild, strangely colored creatures. The door to Leck's stairway, hidden behind the blue horse in her sitting room. The secret entrance to the library, hidden behind the wild-haired woman in the hanging. The strange, colorful insects on the tiles of Katsa's bath; and now, a door in the wall behind this horrible scene.

"Forgive me, Fox," Bitterblue said, "but I'm exhausted. It's time I went to bed."

Then she walked back to her rooms and collected the keys. Going out again past her guards, dropping down the appropriate stairs, winding through the maze, she tried not to rush, because it was silly, only a hunch, and it was foolish to hope too hard.

Inside the room, she went to the tiny owl in the tapestry, lifted the bottom of the great, heavy, woven cloth, and crawled beneath it.

She couldn't see a thing and spent the first minute coughing at the dust. Eyes watering, nose itching like crazy, pressed up against the wall and half suffocated by art, she asked herself what in the blazes she expected to happen now: a door that swung open? A tunnel of light? Feel around, she thought. Po opened the door behind Katsa's tub by pressing on a tile. Feel the wall. Reach high! Leck was taller than you.

Feeling the wall, finding nothing but smooth wood, she grew disheartened, and also slightly embarrassed. What if someone intel ligent whose opinion mattered came into the room, saw the bulge in the hanging, and lifted it to find the queen in her robe groping idly at the wood of the wall? Or, worse, what if they assumed she was an intruder and began whacking at her through the hanging? What if—

Her finger hooked into a knot in the wood, very high, so high that she was on tiptoe when she found it. Stretching herself as tall as she could, Bitterblue pushed her finger farther into the hole. A click sounded, followed by a rolling noise. A space opened before her.

She had to crawl back into the room for her lantern. Once under the hanging again, she lifted her light. It illuminated a stone spiral staircase leading down.

Bitterblue gritted her teeth and began the descent, wishing she had a free hand to steady against the wall. The staircase straightened eventually to a long, stone, descending passage. Continuing on, she found that it curved in places and contained occasional steps leading down. It was difficult to keep track of where she was in relation to Leck's room.

When her lamp found a glowing design on the wall, she stopped to examine it. A painting, painted directly onto the stone. A pack of wolves, silver, gold, and palest pink, howling at a silver moon.

She knew better than to pass on by without trying. Setting her lantern on the floor, she ran her hand over the stone, searching for something, anything that might be anomalous. Her finger caught in a hole on one side of the painting. The shape of the hole was strange. Familiar. Bitterblue touched its edges and realized it was a keyhole.

Breathing shakily, she pulled the keys from the pocket of her robe. Separating the third key from the others, she slipped it into the lock and carefully turned it. A click sounded. The stone wall before her pushed forward.

Taking the lamp again, Bitterblue squeezed into a shallow, lowceilinged sort of closet, with shelves lining the back wall. On the shelves were books bound in leather. She set the lamp on the floor. Pulling a book down at random, her whole body shaking now, Bitterblue knelt. The leather was a sort of folder enclosing loose papers. Opening the folder awkwardly with one hand, holding a sheet of paper to the lamp, she saw squiggles, strange dips, curves, and slashes.

Now she remembered it: her father's peculiar, squiggly writing. She'd thrown some of it into the fire once. She hadn't been able to read the letters then. Now she understood why.

More secrets in cipher, Bitterblue thought, breathing through the fact. My father wrote his secrets in cipher.

If no one Leck hurt is left to tell me what he did, if no one will tell me the secrets everyone's trying to hide, the secrets that trap everyone inside pain, perhaps it doesn't matter. For Leck can tell me himself. His secrets will tell me what he did to leave my kingdom so broken. And finally, I'll understand.