PART FIVE
The Ministry of Stories and Truth
(Late December and January)
43
IT WAS SOOTHING, when so little else in the world lent itself to clarity, to make lists of tasks that needed execution, then choose a person to entrust with each task. It was comforting to meet the person and understand, finally, why Helda or Teddy or Giddon had recommended the person. And heartening to discuss the task with that person, then leave the meeting feeling as if the execution of the task was perhaps not one of the five most hopeless undertakings on earth. She knew they couldn't all be, for there were well more than five tasks.
Hava had surprised Bitterblue with a few truly pertinent staff recommendations. The new Master of Prisons, for example, was a woman Hava had witnessed working on the silver docks, a Monsean Graceling named Goldie who'd grown up on a Lienid ship and eventually become the commander of the navy prison in Ror City. Upon returning to Monsea after Leck's death, she'd discovered that the Monsean Guard didn't employ women, at all, for anything, and certainly not to command its prisons. Goldie was Graced, of all things, with singing.
"My new prison master is a songbird," Bitterblue muttered to herself at her desk. "It's absurd." But it was no less absurd than women not being employed by the Monsean Guard. She could accept the one to change the other. And it was an exciting change. The Dellians advised her on the matter, for they'd had women in their army for decades.
"I feel just a tad better about the Estill business now that you've made an ally in the Dellians, Bitterblue," said Po, lying on his back on Bitterblue's sofa. "At least about the danger of war. They're a serious military power. They'll back you if there's trouble."
"Does this mean you've let go of the certainty that I'm about to be attacked at every moment?"
"No," he said. "The existence of the Council endangers you."
"I'm a queen, Po," Bitterblue retorted. "I'll never be safe. Also, when it comes to war, the Dellians don't want to get involved."
"The Dellians were pretending not to exist. Now they're behaving like neighbors. And you've charmed their mind reader, which is never easily done."
"It can't be that hard, if Katsa charmed you."
"You don't find me charming?" Katsa asked her from the sitting room floor, where she sat idly with her back to the sofa. "Move over," she said to Po, shoving his legs.
"Hello," he said. "Would it kill you to ask nicely?"
"I've been asking you nicely for at least ten seconds and you've been ignoring me. Move over. I want to sit down."
Po made a show of beginning to move out of the way, then flipped himself off the sofa and flattened her. "So predictable," Bitterblue muttered as the two of them began wrestling on the rug.
"Fire is the sister-in-law of the king and the stepmother of the woman who commands the Dellian Army, Bitterblue," yelled Po, his face jammed into the carpet. "She's a valuable friend!"
"I'm right here," Bitterblue said. "You don't need to yell."
"I'm yelling because I'm in pain!" he yelled, his head under the sofa.
"I'm having a hard time with this letter," said Bitterblue vaguely. "What do you write to the elderly king of a foreign land when your kingdom is in shambles and you've only just discovered that he exists?"
"Tell him you hope to visit!" yelled Po, who seemed somehow to have gotten the upper hand. He was now straddling Katsa, trying to pin her shoulders to the ground.
Bitterblue sighed. "Perhaps I should ask him for advice. Katsa, you've met him. How did he seem?"
Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. "He was handsome," she said.
Po moaned. "Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?"
"I would not push a seventy-six-year-old man down a flight of stairs," said Katsa indignantly.
"I suppose I have that to look forward to, then," Po said. "Someday."
"I've never pushed you down a flight of stairs," Katsa said, beginning to laugh.
"I'd like to see you try."
"Don't even joke. It's not funny."
"Oh, wildcat."
And now they were hugging. Bitterblue was left to roll her eyes and struggle alone with her letter to King Nash of the Dells.
"I've met a lot of kings, Bitterblue," said Katsa. "This one is a decent man, surrounded by decent people. They watched us quietly, for fifteen years, waiting to see if we could bumble ourselves into a more civilized state, rather than trying to conquer us. Po's right. You should tell him that you'd like to visit. And it would be entirely appropriate for you to ask him for advice. I have never been so happy," she added, sighing.
"Happy?"
"When I understood that the land I'd found was a land slow to war, with a king who was not an ass, and Pikkia another peaceful nation above them, I'd never been so happy. It changes the balance of the world."
ONE ADVANTAGE OF traveling by tunnel was that a tunnel made weather irrelevant. The Dellians could return in the winter, or wait until winter had passed—but, I miss my husband, Fire admitted to Bitterblue one day.
Bitterblue tried to imagine the kind of man who could be Fire's husband. "Is your husband like you?"
Fire smiled. He is old like me.
"What is his name?"
Brigan.
"And how long have you been married to him?"
Forty-eight years, said Fire.
They were tromping across the back garden, for Bitterblue had wanted to show Fire the Bellamew of her mother, fierce and strong, turning into a mountain lion. Now Bitterblue stopped, hugging herself, letting the snow soak into her boots.
What is it, my dear? asked Fire, stopping beside her.
"It's the first time I've ever heard of two people being together that long, and neither dying, and neither being awful," she said. "It makes me happy."
FIRE WAS MISSING two fingers, which had frightened Bitterblue the first time she'd noticed. Your father did not take them, Fire assured her; then asked her how much of a sad story she wanted to know.
This was how Bitterblue learned that forty-nine years ago, the Dells had been a kingdom with no certain shape, a kingdom recovering from a great evil. Like Monsea.
My father was a monster too, Fire told her.
"You mean, a monster like you?" asked Bitterblue.
He was a monster like me, said Fire, nodding, in the Dellian sense. He was a beautiful man with silver hair and a powerful mind. But he was a monster the way you normally use the word here as well. He was a terror, like your father. He used his power to destroy people. He destroyed our king and ruined our kingdom. That's why I came to you, Bitterblue.
"Because your father destroyed your kingdom?" Bitterblue said, confused.
Because when I heard about you, Fire said patiently, my heart burst open. I felt that I knew what you'd faced and what you're facing.
Bitterblue understood. Her voice was small. "You came just to comfort me?"
I'm not a young woman, Bitterblue, Fire said, smiling. I did not come for the exercise. Here, I'll tell you the story.
And Bitterblue hugged herself again, because the story of the Dells was, indeed, sad, but also because it gave her hope for what Monsea could be in forty-nine years. And what she could be too.
Fire said something else that gave Bitterblue hope. She taught Bitterblue a word: Eemkerr. Eemkerr had been Leck's first, true name.
Bitterblue took this information straight to the library. "Death?" she said. "Do we have birth records for the seven kingdoms for the year Leck would have been born? Will you review them for someone with a name that sounds like Eemkerr?"
"A name that sounds like Eemkerr," Death repeated, peering up at her from his new desk, which was covered with smelly, scorched papers.
"Lady Fire says that Leck told her that before his name was Leck, it was Eemkerr."
"Which is a name she remembers from almost fifty years ago," Death said sarcastically, "spoken to her, not spelled, presumably not a name from her own language, and conveyed to you mentally fifty years later. And I'm to recall every instance of a name of that nature in all the birth records available to me from the relevant year for all seven kingdoms, on the extremely slim chance that we have the name right and a record exists?"
"I know you're just as happy as I am," said Bitterblue.
Death's mouth twitched. Then he said, "Give me some time to remember, Lady Queen."
WHEN YOU VISIT us, Fire said, you will see the ways Leck tried to re-create the Dells here. I hope it doesn't distress you. Our kingdom is beautiful and I would hate for it to cause you pain.
They stood in Bitterblue's office, looking out at the bridges. "I believe," Bitterblue said, giving it careful consideration, "that if your home reminds me of mine, I will like your home. Leck was—what he was. But he did manage, somehow, to make this castle beautiful and strange, and I'd be sorry to change some things about it. He accidentally filled it with art that tells the truth," she said. "And I've even begun to appreciate the folly of these bridges. They have little reason to exist, except as a monument to the truth of all that's happened, and because they're beautiful."
Bitterblue let Winged Bridge fill her sight, floating blue and white, like a winged thing. Monster Bridge, where her mother's body had burned. Winter Bridge, glimmering with mirrors that reflected the gray of the winter sky.
She said, "I suppose those are reasons to exist."
WE WILL LEAVE before too long, said Fire. Do I understand that you'll send a small party with us?
"Yes," Bitterblue said. "Helda is helping me assemble it. I don't know most of them, Fire. I'm sorry not to send people I know more personally. My friends are absorbed with the Estillan situation and my own crisis here, and I fear that my clerks and guards are a bit too fragile right now for me to send with you." It was difficult to characterize the effect Fire had on Bitterblue's clerks and guards, or indeed, on any of her more empty-eyed people. She brought a deep peace to some, she made others frantic, and Bitterblue wasn't certain that one was any better than the other. Her people needed practice sitting comfortably in their own minds.
There's one who's asked to join us that I believe you know well, said Fire.
"Is there?"
A sailor. He wants to join us in our exploration of the eastern seas. I understand that he's been in some trouble with your law, Bitterblue?
Ah, said Bitterblue, taking a breath through a rush of sadness. Absorbing the inevitability of this news. You must mean Sapphire. Yes. Sapphire stole my crown.
Fire paused, considering Bitterblue as she stood, small and quiet, in the window. Why did he steal your crown?
Because, Bitterblue whispered. He loved me and I hurt him.
After a moment, Fire said gently, He is welcome to join us.
Take care of him.
We will, of course.
He can give you good dreams, Bitterblue said.
Good dreams? The sleeping kind?
Yes, the sleeping kind. It's his Grace. He can make you dream the most marvelous, comforting things.
Well, Fire said. It's possible I've been waiting to meet your thief all my life.