Bitterblue skt-3

by Kristin Cashore

  She spoke it like a taunt, and Bitterblue watched her quietly, struck by the strangeness of seeing someone so changed. Was this, for the first time, Fox as she really was?

  "Do you think I want you to hang?" she asked. "For being a common thief, and not a very impressive one? Don't forget that we handed you your prize."

  "My family has been thieves longer than yours has ruled," Fox spat out. "There's nothing common about us."

  "You're thinking of my father's side of the family," said Bitterblue calmly, "and forgetting my mother's. Which reminds me. Guards, see if she has a ring on her person, would you?"

  Less than a minute later, after a short, ugly struggle, Fox gave up the ring she wore on a band around her wrist, under her sleeve. One of the guards, rubbing a sore shin where he'd been kicked, passed it to Bitterblue. It was the replica of the ring Ashen had worn for Bitterblue, the ring all of Bitterblue's spies carried: gold, with inset gray stones.

  Holding it in her hand, closing it in her fist, Bitterblue felt that some sort of order had now been restored, for Fox had no right to wear something of Ashen's against her skin.

  "You may take her away," Bitterblue said to the guards. "That's all I wanted."

  CLERKS WHO'D HARDLY ever been up to her office before climbed the stairs today, to bring her reports. Whenever they left her again, she sat with her head in her hands, trying to loosen her braids. The sense of being overwhelmed slammed against her. Where was she to start? The Monsean Guard was a great worry, for it was huge and it was everywhere; it was a net that spread itself across the entire kingdom, and she depended upon it to protect her people.

  "Froggatt," she said to her clerk the next time he walked through the door. "How will I teach everyone to think things through, and make their own decisions, and become real people again?"

  Froggatt stared at a window, biting his lip. He was younger than most of the others and, she recalled, recently married. She remembered that she'd seen him smile once. "May I speak freely, Lady Queen?"

  "Yes, always."

  "For now, Lady Queen," he said, "allow us to continue to obey. But give us honorable instructions, Lady Queen," he said, turning a flushed face to hers. "Ask us to do honorable things, so that we may have the honor of obeying you."

  It was as Po had said, then. They needed a new leader.

  SHE WENT TO the art gallery. She was looking for Hava, though she didn't know why. There was something about Hava's fear that she wanted to be near, because she understood it, and something about being able to hide; something about turning into something one wasn't.

  It was less dusty than it had been, and the fires were lit. Hava seemed to be trying to turn it into a habitable place. There was a kind of flicker in her vision that Bitterblue was becoming accustomed to, whenever Hava was hiding in plain sight, but nothing in the gallery was flickering today. Bitterblue sat on the floor to the side of the sculptures in the sculpture room, watching their transformations.

  After some time, Hava found her there.

  "Lady Queen," she said. "What's wrong?"

  Considering the plain face of this girl, her strange, copper-red eyes, Bitterblue said, "I want to turn into something I'm not, Hava. Like you do, or like one of your mother's sculptures."

  Hava walked to the windows beyond the sculptures, windows that looked out over the great courtyard. "I remain myself, Lady Queen," she said. "It's only other people who think I'm something I'm not. Which only reinforces, every time, the thing I am, which is a pretender."

  "I'm a pretender too," said Bitterblue quietly. "Right now, I'm pretending to be the leader of Monsea."

  "Hm," said Hava, pursing her lips and staring out the window. "My mother's sculptures aren't about people being what they're not either, Lady Queen, not really. She had a way of seeing truths about people, and showing them with her sculptures. Have you ever thought of that?"

  "You mean that I really am a castle," said Bitterblue dryly, "and you're a bird?"

  "I knew how to fly away," Hava said, "in a sense, anytime anyone else came near. The only person I was ever myself with was my mother. Even my uncle didn't know, until recently, that I was alive. It was our way of hiding me from Leck, Lady Queen. She pretended to him that I'd died, and then, every time he or anyone else at court came near, I used my Grace to hide. I flew away," she said simply, "and Leck never knew that my Grace was the inspiration for all her sculptures."

  Bitterblue's eyes locked on Hava, suddenly wondering something. Unsettled, and trying to make a more focused study of Hava's face. "Hava," she said, "who is your father?"

  Hava didn't seem to hear. "Lady Queen," she said in a peculiar voice, "who is that person in the courtyard?"

  "What?"

  "That person," Hava said, pointing, her nose pressed to the window, speaking in the wondering sort of voice that Teddy used when he talked about books.

  Joining her carefully at the glass, Bitterblue looked down and saw a sight that was all comfort: Katsa and Po in the courtyard, kissing.

  "Katsa," Bitterblue breathed happily.

  "Beyond Lady Katsa," said Hava impatiently.

  Beyond Katsa was a close-knit group of people that Bitterblue had definitely never seen before. At the edge of the group was a woman, an elderly woman. She leaned against a younger man who stood beside her. Her coat was pale brown fur; the hat on her head was pale brown fur. Her eyes, all at once, rose to meet Bitterblue's in the high gallery window.

  Bitterblue needed to see her hair.

  Like magic, the woman pulled off her hat and let her hair tumble down, scarlet and gold and pink, streaked with silver.

  It was the woman from the hanging in the library, and Bitterblue didn't know why she was crying.

  42

  THEY WERE FROM a land east of the eastern mountains, called the Dells, and they came in peace. Except that some of them were from a land to the north of the Dells called Pikkia, a land that occasionally bickered with the Dells, but was currently at peace with them—or not? It was hard to follow, because Katsa was explaining it badly and none of them seemed to speak the Monsean language much at all. Bitterblue knew what language they must all speak, but the only words she could remember were cobwebs and monster. And she still seemed to be leaking tears.

  "Death," she said. "Somebody fetch Death. Katsa, just for a minute, stop talking," she said, needing quiet, because something peculiar was happening here in the courtyard. The voices, the need to understand messy things, and all the nattering—all of it was keeping her from being able to focus.

  Everyone stood quietly, waiting.

  Bitterblue couldn't take her eyes off the woman from the hanging. And the strangeness was coming from this woman: Bitterblue realized that now; she was changing the air somehow, changing the way Bitterblue felt. She tried to breathe easily, tried not to be overwhelmed. Tried to see the woman's individual parts instead of being invaded by . . . her extraordinary whole. Her skin was brown and her eyes were green and her hair—Bitterblue understood the woman's hair, for she'd seen the rat pelt, but the pelt hadn't been a living, breathing woman, and it had not made her feel as if the top of her head were singing.

  The air was soaked with the feeling of power being used.

  "What are you doing to us?" Bitterblue whispered to the woman.

  "She does understand you, Bitterblue," said Katsa, "though she doesn't speak our language. She can respond to you, but she'll only do so with your permission, for she does it mentally. It'll feel like she's in your head."

  "Oh," Bitterblue said, stepping back. "No. Never."

  "All she does is communicate, Bitterblue," said Katsa gently. "She doesn't steal your thoughts, or change them."

  "But she could if she wanted to," said Bitterblue, for she'd read her father's stories about a woman who looked like this and had a venomous mind. Behind her, the courtyard had filled with servants, with clerks, guards, Giddon, Bann, Raffin, Helda, Hava—Anna the baker, Ornik the smith. Dyan, the gardener. Froggatt, Holt. And other
s filing in, and all of them staring in wonder at a woman who was standing there glowing with something.

  "She doesn't want to change your thoughts, Bitterblue," said Katsa, "or anyone's here. And in your case, she tells me she couldn't, because you have a good, strong mind that is closed to her interference."

  "I've had practice," Bitterblue said in a small, hard voice. "How does her power work? I want to know exactly how it works."

  Po broke in. "Beetle," he said, his voice hinting that she was, perhaps, being rude, "I understand you, but perhaps you'd like to greet them and bring them in out of the cold first? They've come a long way to meet you. They'd probably like to be shown to their rooms."

  Bitterblue cursed the tears that kept running down her cheeks. "Perhaps you've forgotten the events of the last few days, Po," she said plainly. "It pains me to be rude, and I apologize for my rudeness. But, Katsa, you have brought a woman who controls minds into a castle of people particularly vulnerable to such a thing. Look around," she said, gesturing to the courtyard that continued to fill with people. "Do you think this is good for them, to be standing here, mindlessly staring? Maybe it is," she said bitterly. "If she truly comes in peace, maybe she can be their higher power, and keep them from committing any more suicides."

  "Suicides?" said Katsa in dismay.

  "I'm responsible for these people," Bitterblue said. "I'm not going to welcome her until I understand who she is and how her power works."

  THEY WENT TO the library to talk about it: Bitterblue, her Council friends, the Dellians and Pikkians, away from prying eyes and empty, captive minds. Passing Death's ruin of a desk, she remembered that Death was in the infirmary.

  The strangers seemed neither surprised nor offended by Bitterblue's lack of hospitality. But when she walked them into her alcove, they stopped, eyes widening, and gawked at the hanging, murmuring among themselves in words Bitterblue knew the sound of, but couldn't understand. The woman with the power, in particular, exclaimed something to the others, then grabbed hold of one of her companions and motioned him to say something, or do something, to Bitterblue. The man stepped forward, bowed, and spoke in a heavy but somehow pleasant accent. "Queen Bitterblue," he said. "Please forgive my—poor speech—but Lady Bier remembers this—" The man gestured to the hanging. "She is moved to—" He stopped, in frustration.

  Katsa interjected quietly. "She says that Leck kidnapped her, Bitterblue, and murdered one of her friends, a very long time ago. She believes this is a scene from the kidnapping, for that is the coat he gave her to wear, and they passed through a forest of white trees. Afterwards, she escaped, and fought him. In the fight, he fell through a crack in the ground, then presumably followed a tunnel that brought him to Monsea. She's moved to tell you how sorry she is that he found his way back here, and did harm to your kingdom. The Dells only discovered the seven kingdoms fifteen years ago, and the only tunnels they've known until now have brought them into far eastern Estill, so they were some time in discovering the problems in Monsea. She's sorry for letting Leck return and for not helping Monsea to defeat him."

  It was strange to listen to Katsa interpret. It involved long, silent pauses on Katsa's part, which gave Bitterblue time to gape and wonder, and be boggled at some of the more astonishing things Katsa said. Which Katsa then followed up with even more astonishing things.

  "What does she mean, return?" Bitterblue said.

  Katsa squinted. "Lady Fire is unsure of what you're asking."

  "She said that the tunnel brought him back here, to Monsea," Bitterblue said. "That she allowed him to return. Does she mean that Leck wasn't Dellian? Does she know he was Monsean?"

  "Ah," said Katsa, pausing for the answer. "Leck was not Dellian. She doesn't know if he was Monsean, only that he was from the seven kingdoms. There are no Gracelings in the Dells," Katsa added, speaking for herself now. "My arrival created quite a commotion, let me tell you."

  I'm from the seven kingdoms, Bitterblue thought, completely. Dare I hope I'm Monsean? And this woman, this strange, beautiful woman. My father killed her friend.

  They discovered the seven kingdoms fifteen whole years ago? "That man called her Lady Bier," Bitterblue said. "But you called her Lady Fire, Katsa."

  "Bir is the Dellian word for fire," said a worn and familiar voice behind Bitterblue. "Bee-ee-rah, or, in our letters, B-i-r, Lady Queen."

  Spinning, Bitterblue faced her librarian, who was listing a bit to one side, like a ship taking water. He held the charred remains of the Dellian-Gracelingian dictionary in his hands. Part of its back end was gone, the pages were warped, and the red cover was now mostly black.

  "Death!" she said. "I'm glad you could join us. I wonder—" She was hopelessly confused. "Perhaps we should all learn each other's names and sit down," she said, after which there were introductions all around, and hands taken, and manuscripts cleared from the table, and additional chairs found and wedged in among the others. And names almost immediately forgotten, because there was too much else going on. They were a group of nine travelers: three explorers, four guards, one healer, and the lady, who served as ambassador, and also as a silent translator, and who invited Bitterblue to call her Fire. Most of the travelers were browner-skinned than the most sundarkened Lienid Bitterblue had ever seen, except for a couple who were paler, and one, the man who'd spoken before, who was fully as pale as Madlen. Their hair and eyes were also a range of hues—ordinary hues, aside from Lady Fire. And still, there was something in the way they all looked—in their jaws? In their expressions?—something they all had in common. Bitterblue wondered if they saw some sort of distinctive similarity when they looked at her and her friends too.

  "I don't completely understand this," she said. "Any of it."

  Lady Fire said something, which the pale man made a move to translate, in his nice, funny accent. "The mountains have always been too high," he said. "We have had—stories, but no way across, or—" He made a motion with his hand.

  "Under," said Po.

  "Yes. No way under," said the man. "Fifteen years ago, a—" He paused again, baffled.

  "A landslide," said Po. "Revealed a tunnel. And now the stories will no longer be mere stories."

  "Po," said Bitterblue, disturbed that he was publicly displaying his own ability, even though she knew he was pretending that Lady Fire was talking to him mentally. Wasn't he? Or maybe she was talking to him mentally, and if so, did Lady Fire know what Po was? Wouldn't that make her a thousand times more dangerous? Or—Bitterblue grasped her forehead. Had Bitterblue, sitting here, thinking about it all, revealed Po's secret to Lady Fire?

  Po's hand found its way around Katsa to Bitterblue's shoulder. "Take a breath, Cousin," he said. "This comes on the tail of too many horrible days. I believe this will seem like good news once you've had the time to absorb it."

  I remember the day we all sat in a circle on this library floor, she thought to him. The world was far smaller then, and still too big.

  Every day is so overwhelming.

  The pale fellow was trying to talk again, saying something about how they were all sorry to have arrived during horrible days. Bitterblue raised her eyes and peered at him as he spoke, trying to place something.

  "Whenever you talk," she said, "there's something familiar about it."

  "Yes, Lady Queen," agreed Death dryly. "Perhaps that's because it's a stronger version of the accent spoken by your healer Madlen."

  Madlen, thought Bitterblue, staring at the man. Yes, how odd that he sounds like Madlen. And how odd that he's pale with amber eyes like Madlen. And—

  My Graceling healer, Madlen.

  There are no Gracelings in the Dells.

  But Madlen has only one eye.

  Just like that, one of Bitterblue's anchors in this world turned, suddenly, into a perfect stranger.

  "Oh," she said dumbly. "Oh dear." She thought of all the books in Madlen's room and found the answer to another question. "Death," she said. "Madlen saw Leck's journals on my bed, then that d
ictionary appeared on your shelf. The dictionary is Madlen's."

  "Yes, Lady Queen," said Death.

  "She told me she came from the far east of Estill," Bitterblue said. "Fetch her. Someone fetch her."

  "Allow me, Lady Queen," Helda said, in a dark voice that made Bitterblue glad she was not Madlen at this moment.

  Helda pushed herself up and swept off, and Bitterblue stared at her guests. They'd all gone over a trifle sheepish.

  "Lady Fire apologizes, Bitterblue," Katsa said. "She says that it's embarrassing to be caught spying, but regrettably, not spying is never an option, as no doubt you understand."

  "I understand that it makes for an interesting definition of the peace they claim to come in," said Bitterblue. "Did they make Madlen take out her own eye?"

  "No," said Lady Fire emphatically.

  "Never," added Katsa. "Madlen lost her eye as a child, doing an experiment with liquids and a powder that exploded. It made it possible for her to pretend."

  "But how does she heal so well? Are all healers in the Dells truly so gifted?"

  Katsa translated. "Medical knowledge is highly advanced there, Bitterblue. Medicines grow there that we don't have here, especially in the west, which is where Madlen is from, and science is paramount. Madlen has been kept supplied with the best Dellian medicines during her time here, to keep up her pretense."

  Science, Bitterblue thought. Real science. I would like that kind of progress in my kingdom, in a sane manner, without delusion. Suddenly, she loved Po for his stupid paper glider, because it was based on reality.

  Then Madlen came into the alcove. First, she went to Lady Fire and kissed the woman's hand, murmuring something in their language. Then she rounded the table to Bitterblue and fell to both knees. "Lady Queen," she said, bowing her head, speaking thickly. "I hope you'll forgive me for deceiving you. I have not liked to do so. At every moment, I've not liked it, and I hope you'll allow me to stay on as your healer."