Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  “Yes, please,” said the calm and precise voice of Ferla. “Tell us what a slut is, Lovisa.”

  The boys turned, startled, to look at her. Her expression was closed, almost haughty, and her hair was pulled back from her forehead as tightly as usual. She wore a sweeping coat of brown and silver fur, as if she were already on her way out, and her blue fox sat in her hood, peeking over her shoulder. The fox’s gold eyes watched Lovisa steadily.

  Lovisa swallowed. “I’m sure I don’t know.”

  “And I’m sure you do,” said Ferla. “Answer your brother. He wants to know what a slut is.”

  “I don’t,” said Viri in a tiny voice. “It’s okay, Mother. I don’t want to know.”

  “I distinctly heard you asking, Viri,” said Ferla. “Are you too cowardly to hear the answer? Ask your sister again.”

  Now Viri was crying. “What’s a slut,” he said to his plate, wiping tears from his face.

  “Ask the question as if you’re curious, Viri. The first time you asked, you sounded curious. And ask it of your sister, not of your plate, because I’m certain she knows.”

  Viri was crying harder now, his breath squeaky and desperate. His fingers had crawled to his mouth. Lovisa sat perfectly still, knowing that if she did or said anything that deviated from her mother’s script, it would probably make things worse for Viri.

  Ferla crossed the room and slapped Viri’s face. His crying turned to a scream. “Take him away,” she said in a disgusted voice to a frightened-looking attendant, who helped Viri up and rushed him out of the room. Lovisa guessed he would spend the day alternating between vomiting and hysterics.

  “Sit down, Erita,” Ferla said when the older boy tried to slip out of his seat too. Erita was doing a better job of not crying, but his face was tight, his eyes big. “I want you to hear Lovisa’s definition of a slut, so that later, you can tell your brothers. Lovisa? We’re waiting.”

  Lovisa forced her voice calm. “A slut isn’t anything. There’s no such thing. It’s just a nasty word people use to try to make other people ashamed for wanting to be happy.”

  Ferla swept around the table and was reaching for Lovisa before Lovisa even understood what was happening. Ferla’s fingers clutched the twists in Lovisa’s hair and pulled her up from her seat so fast and hard that Lovisa couldn’t help crying out in pain. Ferla began dragging Lovisa across the room by her hair, her fox bobbing around on her back, comically, like he was enjoying some kind of carnival ride.

  “You little slut,” Ferla was whispering between her teeth, spitting from the force of her words. “You can kiss as many academy students as you want, you can have sex with them, you can even get pregnant and have their babies, I don’t care, but the next time you put your dirty mouth on an employee, I will wash your mouth clean myself, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mother,” Lovisa gasped.

  “Go to your father,” Ferla said, shoving her through the doorway and into the corridor. “He wants to speak to you.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Ferla spun back, returning to the dining room. Lovisa heard her clipped voice say, “Eat your breakfast, Erita, and stop sniveling.”

  For a moment, Lovisa stood, shivering in the corridor. She touched her hair, checking to see that it was still in place. She wanted to take it down and massage her scalp. She wanted to be in her bed in her dormitory bedroom, where things like this didn’t happen.

  Then, feeling calmer, she crossed to her father’s library. It was over now; Lovisa wasn’t afraid of her father.

  “Papa?” she said, pushing the door open.

  “Lovisa,” he said, looking up from his desk. “Come in.”

  He folded his hands over his papers, watching her with a grave expression. Attentive, fatherly, concerned. Lovisa was ashamed suddenly of the part she was about to play, lying to her father, but at least the shame was helpful. She allowed it to show on her face.

  “Lovisa,” said her father. “Your mother and I are considerably disappointed in you.”

  “Papa, I only kissed him,” said Lovisa.

  “There is no ‘only,’” said Benni, “when a young man we’ve entrusted with this family’s safety has his hands on our child.”

  “Are you sure you’re angry with me? It sounds like you’re angry with him.”

  “He’s an employee,” said Benni. “We’ve dealt with him. He’ll never see the inside of this house again, or the house of any reputable family. His sister is one of our guards too, did you know that? We’ve had to give her a warning.” He paused, studying her reaction. “What do you think of that?”

  “It’s unfair, Papa, to both of them. It wasn’t his fault, and it certainly wasn’t hers. And we can’t help how we feel.”

  “So. You imagine yourself to have fallen in love,” he said, sounding satisfied.

  “Papa,” said Lovisa reproachfully. “How would you like it if I told you that you imagine yourself to have fallen in love with Mother? You can’t tell me whom I should love.”

  “Indeed,” he said, making a triangle with his hands and resting his chin upon it. “You’ll think I’m heartless, Lovisa, but a daughter of the Cavenda family cannot fall in love with a house guard. Do you imagine your mother and I would set you up to live together?”

  “Why should you? Do you think I won’t be able to find a profitable industry?”

  “In fact, I think a lot of doors in Ledra would close to you if you lived like that with your own house guard. You excel in your politics and government classes, Lovisa. You know we expect you to follow in our footsteps, whether it’s as a Scholar or an Industrialist. Either way, it’ll require wiser decisions on your part.”

  “Doors will always open to me, Papa!” Lovisa said. “I’m a Cavenda. If I married a house guard, I would still be a Cavenda.” In Winterkeep, when two people married, the surname of the wealthier person became their family name. The name Cavenda came from Lovisa’s mother.

  “Parents can take a name away from a child,” her father reminded her quietly.

  Lovisa looked into her own hands, trying not to show how astonished she was. Parents took names away from a child only if they were officially disowning that child. It was hardly ever done, except, perhaps, in cases of the social shame that came from raising a criminal. And not a minor criminal; one who murdered or raped, did truly inexcusable things.

  Before Lovisa could think of the right response, the door swung open and Ferla swept in. Ignoring Lovisa, she advanced on Benni’s desk, glaring at him. Her hood lay against her back heavily, which meant that her fox was still riding inside it.

  Benni stood to meet his wife, and when she held out her hand, silently took the object she offered, a bit flustered. Ferla was visibly seething at Benni, which was unusual. Even at the heights of her temper, she was rarely angry directly at Benni. Had he done something to upset her?

  Then Ferla spun around and marched toward the door without speaking. A moment later, they heard the front door slam. That was unusual too. Her parents always kissed goodbye in the morning.

  In his hands, Benni held the leather wallet Lovisa knew to be stuffed with samklavi candies. He slipped it into a pocket, then smiled at Lovisa.

  A smile, when he’d just threatened to take her name away?

  It was exhausting, sometimes, to hold up the pretense of being unintelligent about certain things. “I don’t believe you’d ever take my name away, just because I loved someone,” she said. “I’m not a criminal.”

  Benni peered at her so keenly that Lovisa feared she’d accidentally said something intelligent. She gave him her blankest expression.

  “Did you know that I lived at home during my tenure at the academy, Lovisa?” he said. “I did so at my parents’ request, so that they could teach me the shipping business.”

  It was difficult for Lovisa to keep her expression smooth in
response to any suggestion she live at home. Benni came from a family of shipbuilders, shipowners, and importers. He owned dozens of ships and he was never satisfied, always wanting to move into newer, bigger, more profitable kinds of shipping. Ferla’s mine—the one she shared with Katu—was a steady supplier of silver. It had been rich in zilfium too, in Ferla’s father’s time, though the zilfium had recently reached the point of depletion. The diminished value of the mine was one of the many reasons Ferla worked so tirelessly and pushed those around her so hard, trying to live up to the standards of her father.

  Lovisa had no interest in either of her parents’ family industries. Not that she had any interest in her own course of study either; she’d chosen the school of politics and government out of a bored sense of obligation. Maybe also because it was easy. “I think it’s better for my schoolwork if I live on campus, Papa,” she said. “I’d better get going, or I’ll miss my first class.”

  * * *

  —

  On the walk back to the dormitory, Lovisa felt like a different person from the girl who’d left campus the night before.

  She’d had sex twice with a guard whose career was now ruined; she’d stolen from her parents while they slept; and she’d prepared a secret path into the house with a plan to sneak into her mother’s prison soon.

  What were her parents fighting about? What was her father storing in the attic room? And why had her mother passed her father candy, wrapped up in a wallet as if it were a state secret?

  In one pocket, the box with the key imprint bumped against Lovisa’s leg. She reached in to touch it. Then, from another pocket, she unearthed some biscuits, which she ate in lieu of breakfast.

  Chapter Nine

  Bitterblue woke to dim gray light, the scent of lavender, and the feeling that her hands and feet were on fire.

  “I don’t want to die,” she cried out, confused, then hearing her own voice and understanding she mustn’t be dead. Feeling soft, silky blankets and pillows around her; realizing she wasn’t drowning.

  She was in a small room, its walls touched by weak light filtering through a high window. The lavender smell came from the bedding, but there was another smell underneath. A more pervasive smell, as if the lavender was meant to mask something less pleasant. More animal.

  “Winterkeep,” Bitterblue said, remembering. “Is this Winterkeep?”

  Other memories began to form. The ship. The wave. The incredible moment of being tossed through the air, like a doll stuffed with beans, then splashing into the sea. Being surrounded by those purple creatures, just at the moment of giving up. Silbercows, Bitterblue thought, remembering more about Winterkeep. They rescued me and brought me to people in an airship. They showed me pictures in my mind. They saved my life!

  Bitterblue shoved her blankets back and swung her feet down, thinking she would go find everyone, tell them she was awake. But when she tried to stand, her feet screamed with pain and she fell back onto the bed.

  “Ow!” she cried. “Hello? Giddon?”

  When no one came, she took stock. She was wearing someone else’s pajamas and her toes were bandaged. Frostbite? Chillblains? Her fingers hurt too, as did her nose and ears, but they weren’t bandaged. Touching her arms, she noticed that her knives were missing. Then she realized that her gold rings were gone too; then remembered her mother’s ring.

  Oh, no, she thought, imagining the ring falling into darkness, thudding against the floor of the Brumal Sea. I’m sorry, Mama, she thought, with the desolate sense that she’d abandoned her actual mother in a cold and lonely place. I hope there are interesting things to see down there.

  “Giddon?” she said out loud. “Where is everyone?”

  Grumbling about how she always had to do everything for herself, Bitterblue put her feet to the floor again and, carefully, tried to stand. It hurt, but she could do it. She shuffled forward a step or two, until it became too painful. Then she knelt, tried crawling, which was equally painful because her hands ached. Slowly, she made her way to the door. She reached for the knob.

  The door was locked.

  That was strange.

  Giddon? Why would the door be locked?

  She knocked on the door with her elbow and called out once more, but nothing happened.

  Shifting toward a different understanding of her situation, Bitterblue studied the room. The only furniture was the bed. There were no lamps. She thought the thick rug might be the source of the unpleasant smell. She saw a chamber pot peeking out from under the bed. The window was high in the wall, too high for Bitterblue to reach.

  And the door is locked, she told Giddon. And you’re not here. And I’ve been left with no food or water or lamps, and someone has taken my rings.

  Something inside Bitterblue was becoming interested and still. She shuffled back to the bed, noticing the distinctly Keepish softness of the silk of her sheets, the bright Keepish shade of crimson. Pulling the covers around her shivering body, she lay down, then proceeded to think. About her drowned men; about zilfium, and people importing it from her mountains. About why someone in Winterkeep might want the Queen of Monsea locked in a room.

  * * *

  —

  She woke to the tiniest sound, a scratch or a scrape, and sat up fast. The room looked the same, but the light had become more diffuse. She could see a pale blue sky through her window.

  Then she saw something gleaming white on the rug. Someone had slipped a piece of paper under the door.

  Well. At least that’s something.

  Steeling herself against the pain, Bitterblue climbed down to the rug again and crawled to the door. Po told me once that there’s no shame in crawling, when you can’t walk, she said to Giddon, picking the paper up.

  It was a picture of Bitterblue City, a print, one she’d seen before. In fact, she’d sent Mikka and Brek to Winterkeep each with a copy. This version of the picture, however, had been altered. Her castle and the bridges all flew flags, drawn in graphite, that hadn’t been in the original. Some of the flags showed a scene of silbercows in the ocean, a gigantic, underwater creature below them: the flag of Winterkeep. Some of the flags showed hills rising to a mountain peak, and above the peak, a single star shaped like a sword with a cross guard. Giddon had drawn this flag for her. It was the new flag of Estill.

  Bitterblue’s hands held the paper tightly, for she could not help but understand this. It was a declaration of war.

  PART TWO

  The Keeper

  The creature who lived at the bottom of the sea gazed at the little metal egg with the sparkly ring and pin, fondling it with the tip of one of her tentacles.

  She hadn’t pulled the pin yet to see if anything happened. She was waiting for the moment when she really needed cheering up. She thought it would come soon, for she did not like her new, disrupted world.

  For one thing, there were the four silbercows who’d escaped from the massacre, who’d seen her, and chastised her for not helping. They’d told all the other silbercows about her, calling her that name they insisted on using, Keeper. Then silbercows had come in droves to stare at her and say “Keeper” at her. Some had touched her. Some had even tried to talk to her, which had been the scariest thing of all and had made her vibrate and cry and feel so dizzy that she saw stars. And they kept pressing in, asking her to do things, “Keeper” things she didn’t understand, like play with whales or sing. It was terrible. Nothing felt more lonely than being surrounded by silbercows who thought she was somebody else, instead of who she really was, someone they could see if they just looked, a large but ordinary creature with a round body, thirteen tentacles, and twenty-three eyes, who loved her treasures and wanted to be left alone.

  One day, while they were all pressing in, a song of sadness burst out of the creature. It was the first song she could ever remember singing, beautiful and wordless, all about who she was. It started as a screech and a buz
z, then a rumble, then a jagged explosion of sensation that felt really good to her, really true and brave. The silbercows leaped back in alarm. Then all of them except for the original four sped away. She kept singing. It felt so right.

  When she stopped, the four silbercows stared at her with enormous eyes, alert and tense, as if bracing for her next song. I’m done, she said, which seemed to help them relax. Then, in a conversation amongst themselves, they decided that she couldn’t be the Keeper after all. Silbercows didn’t speak in words, more in images and feelings, but the creature understood from their conversation that the Keeper was famous for having a mesmerizing singing voice. Her singing voice, in contrast, made them feel like they were going to turn inside out and explode.

  The creature was extremely relieved. She would’ve sung a song sooner, if she’d only known. Fewer silbercows came to stare at her after that. Mostly it was just the four. And that was better. But it was still too many. One of them had the pucker of a long scar on his shoulder, and a very stiff and achy flipper, from the massacre. The second had deep scratches on her side and the third was missing part of her tail fin. The fourth silbercow seemed strong in body, but there was something wrong in his eyes, and he never talked. She liked that one best, because he never talked. He even brought her a ring that had slipped from the finger of a drowning human they’d saved. It was gold with inset gray stones. The creature wore it on the tip of one of her tentacles. Often, when she was alone, she stretched her tentacle up and watched the ring glimmer with shifting light as the water around it moved. It made her very happy.

  But she was rarely alone now, not with these four visiting her constantly.

  There were strange sounds in the ocean now too sometimes. They were faint and very far away, like a distant whisper, making her think she was imagining things; but then the floor under her body would shake with the smallest rumble, and she would know. Something loud was happening, somewhere in the ocean. Something new.