Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  Giddon’s mind sharpened, a pleasant mask descending upon his own face. Cobal, the Estillan envoy, was small, cheerful, and flushed with pink, holding a brisk hand out to Hava, expressing his sorrow for their loss with what sounded like sincere regret.

  Giddon noticed that Perry was still visibly upset. “Where are you from in Estill, Cobal?” he asked, to distract the man.

  “The southern forests,” Cobal said, with a quick, conspiratorial grin. “I know who you work for, son, and what you’ve been up to. You don’t need to pretend.”

  Alarmed by this openness—and annoyed at being called “son” by a man who seemed little older than he—Giddon rose, deciding it was time to put an end to this visit.

  “I didn’t mean to chase you away,” said Cobal. “In fact, I hoped you would deliver a gift to your host on my behalf.”

  “To Quona Varana?” said Giddon, growing more confused.

  “Indeed,” said Cobal. “Quona and I share a passion.” Then, from inside his jacket, he pulled out a long stick that had a pom-pom dangling by a string from the end.

  “That appears to be a cat toy,” said Giddon, who was beginning to wonder if the Estillan envoy was in his right mind.

  “Yes,” said Cobal, his grin transforming into something apologetic. “I’d like to claim pure generosity as my motive, but the truth is, I got stuck inside an amble today without a pass and had to buy something. You don’t have to tell Quona that, though.”

  Taking the toy, Giddon nodded, his pleasant mask still in place. Inside, however, he was struggling to understand a man who would intrude upon grieving people the day after their loss, cheerfully importuning them to carry a silly-looking cat toy across the city.

  “Tell me,” said Cobal, an interesting glint in his eye. “Who’s leading Monsea now that this terrible tragedy has occurred?”

  And now Giddon was beginning to understand. So was Hava; in his peripheral vision, Giddon saw her flicker, once, into a sculpture of a ferocious girl. Cobal let out a small noise of apprehension and stepped back.

  Giddon spoke calmly, with no intention of answering Cobal’s question, though he knew the answer. In fact, he knew every detail of every aspect of the answer, because Bitterblue had asked for Giddon’s presence at every meeting on the matter, and his opinion on every part of her plan to transition Monsea to a republic should she die.

  “The Monsean court is prepared for this situation, of course,” he said. “I’ll let them unveil the news at their own pace. In the meantime, however, I can comfort any worries you or Estill might have that Monsea has been left leaderless. The queen put a great deal of thought into her successor.”

  “Oh, good,” said Cobal.

  “We have to go now,” said Giddon.

  “Don’t forget your toy,” said Cobal.

  The cat toy that Giddon now held in one hand was meant to make him feel foolish. Giddon understood this now, but he didn’t feel foolish. He felt instead that the Estillan envoy had the maturity of a twelve-year-old schoolboy. While he was deciding how to respond—cycling through options that included throwing the cat toy into the fire, shoving it down Cobal’s throat, or bringing it home, because it was a shame to waste a perfectly good cat toy—Hava took it from him and held it out, dangling the pom-pom in front of Cobal’s face. She swung it gently, so that it tapped Cobal on the nose.

  “Boop,” she said. “Good kitty.”

  At Cobal’s outraged expression, Giddon, who was finding it hard not to laugh, walked quickly into the corridor, where his bubbling hysteria immediately threatened to turn into sobs. I will not cry here. Perry was fluttering around him. “He’s really quite a friendly person usually,” he was saying, overflowing with apology and concern. “I think some people just don’t know how to behave around grief. You go back to Quona’s, Giddon, and get some rest. Here, you should have this.”

  He placed a letter into Giddon’s hands. When Giddon looked down, he saw a sealed envelope, addressed to Bitterblue in Prince Skye’s handwriting.

  * * *

  —

  Dinner that evening was much like breakfast. The advisers were depressed and quiet; Quona was forceful; Hava pulled herself into herself; and the room swarmed with cats. One of them lay down on Giddon’s foot again and fell asleep. He peeked under the table. It was a small, pale gray tabby with its belly on one of his boots and its four legs stretched out flat on the floor like an X, as if anyone would ever want to sleep that way.

  “Can I persuade you all to come look at the stars from the comfort of my upstairs sitting room?” said Quona brightly as dinner came to an end.

  “I have letters to write,” said Giddon, who hadn’t had a moment to himself since they’d returned to the house. First, Coran had insisted on checking his vital signs. Then Froggatt had spent an hour impressing upon him a list of all the dinners and parties to which they were invited and at which he, Froggatt, expected Giddon to manage Hava’s unpredictable behavior.

  “In that case, you may sit at the desk,” said Quona.

  “I thought I’d work in my room,” he said. But then Hava said, “I’ll join you, Quona,” with such graciousness that Giddon became too suspicious to refuse. If she was up to something, it was best to know.

  The advisers excused themselves, claiming to have some planning to do. Of course, this annoyed Giddon. Why should they get to escape? He watched them go with a measure of irritability he worked hard to hide, then wondered if he was being sanctimonious.

  Go upstairs and look at the stars, said Bitterblue gently. Say something gracious occasionally. Then you can go to bed.

  The upstairs sitting room, which was on the third floor, had windows overlooking the sea. Giddon had been in this room before, because he’d walked through it on the way from the airship. A staircase in one corner led to the roof. The rug, he noticed now, was patterned with curving shapes that looked like tentacles. The Keeper again.

  Above them came the sound of scurrying feet. “Some of the cats are in the attic,” Quona said when she saw Giddon glancing at the ceiling. She indicated a second staircase, between two fireplaces, that led up to a closed door. Then she showed him to a desk near one of the fireplaces, brought Hava to the chairs by the windows, pulled a cat into her own lap, and rang a bell for tea. Another two cats tucked themselves against her feet.

  Giddon did have letters to write, but first he had Skye’s letter to decipher. He hoped the key was “bratty little brother,” like before. Otherwise, this enterprise would be beyond him. He was not a cipher breaker.

  In the window, Hava had pulled the cat toy from a pocket and was dangling its pom-pom before the nose of the cat in Quona’s lap. The cat glared at it suspiciously, almost cross-eyed, but didn’t react.

  “How fun,” Quona said.

  “I bought it in the Flag Hill amble,” Hava lied. “Quona, did you know that a number of Keepish importers were buying the rock detritus from Monsea’s silver mines for almost no money, cheating Queen Bitterblue out of some of her zilfium?”

  Giddon watched Quona while pretending not to. “I did not,” she said, seeming unruffled. “That sounds like an underhanded thing to do. I hope you’ve put a stop to it.”

  “Of course,” said Hava. “But it’s strange that you don’t know about it. According to the Lienid envoy, a person would have to live under a rock not to know.”

  “Hava,” said Giddon warningly, though this time, he didn’t mean it. Sometimes, it was just his role in their partnership: Hava asked nosy questions, while Giddon pretended to be the conciliator. They’d gathered a lot of information this way.

  “Perhaps living in an isolated house is akin to being under a rock,” said Quona.

  “Maybe,” said Hava. “Did you know that one of the importers was your sister Minta?”

  “Hava!” said Giddon. “Siblings are not responsible for each other’s behavior.”
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br />   “Oh, it’s all right,” said Quona. “I didn’t know, and I’m sorry to hear it.”

  “Nonetheless,” said Giddon, “I apologize for our rudeness.”

  “Grieving people have a special dispensation to say what they like,” said Quona, who seemed unoffended, but nonetheless stood abruptly, carrying the cat away from the cat toy, going to stand in the window. Behind her, Hava shot Giddon a dry grin. He kept his face impassive, in case Quona could see his reflection.

  A moment later, the alphabet created with the key “bratty little brother” began to turn Skye’s letter into recognizable words. Giddon worked steadily, separating meaningful letters from blanks, building sentences and ideas, scratching notes onto the page.

  Welcome to Winterkeep, Cousin, it said. We’re having a wonderful time. You should see eastern Torla. Trains are terrifying and grand. However, we’ve passed through Kamassar and most of the Borzan coast and no one’s seen or heard from Katu, which people say is strange. He’s not a low-profile traveler. Maybe you should look into it more.

  Until our departure from Winterkeep, Saf kept getting that image from silbercows of a house with many windows on a cliff, an airship above, and a disturbance. Silbercows are upset. I doubt it’s relevant. But Saf asked me to tell you he thinks it’s worth investigating.

  At his desk, Giddon gripped his hair, intensely conscious of the room in which he sat, in a house with many windows on a cliff. He studied Quona, wondering how well she knew the Estillan envoy, and whether it mattered.

  “Do you see many silbercows from this house?” he asked her.

  She was still standing at the glass, gazing outward. “Sometimes,” she said, turning to face him. Wind pushed against the big windows, gusting and straining. “I even talk to them now and then, from a balcony in the attic. But I don’t see as many as I used to.”

  “Where did they go?” asked Giddon.

  “I’ve asked them that,” she said. “The answer they give is confusing.” She had a strange light in her eyes, as if some part inside her mind was lit up and had her attention. She was looking at Giddon, but he didn’t think she saw him.

  Suddenly a young woman stepped into the room, tall, brown-skinned like Quona, short-haired, something tight and quiet in her face. She wore furs, but not like the sleek, graceful furs Arni Devret had worn. It was a coat made of more than one kind of animal hide.

  She squared her feet, a tiny blue fox kit tucked into the crook of her arm. The kit had a bandage on its face. Its fur wasn’t gray but actually blue, a deep, twilight blue. “Professor Varana?” she said. “You asked to see me?”

  Quona’s eyes seemed to clear. “Nev!” she said. “Meet Giddon and Hava, who are members of the Monsean delegation. Giddon and Hava, meet Nev, who is one of my finest animal medicine students.”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Nev, touching them with her dark eyes. Her expression was flat, closed. But tired, thought Giddon. Wary. Why is she here so late?

  “Come upstairs, Nev,” said Quona.

  Then Quona led Nev up the stairs to the attic, still carrying the cat in her arms.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Bitterblue woke again to a sound like a burst of wind against wood and glass.

  Opening her eyes to the light of the moon touching her face, she thought, for a moment, that she was on the ship.

  She’d tracked a full cycle of the moon on the deck of the ship, piecemeal, with Giddon, who’d seemed to fall in love with the night sky above the Brumal Sea. There had been so many stars.

  “I think I could love it too,” Bitterblue had said, her body braced against Giddon’s, sheltered from the wind, “if I didn’t feel like I was spinning every time I looked up at it.”

  “Does it help if you imagine the earth under you, supporting you?”

  “But it’s water under us. Not earth.”

  “But the water is holding us up.”

  “No, it’s trying to swallow us. And the sky is trying to smother us, like a blanket we can’t breathe through.”

  “Hm,” said Giddon doubtfully. “I see the problem. Maybe you should try yelling.”

  “What do you mean?” Bitterblue said.

  “Just shake your fist at the sky and yell something.”

  Bitterblue giggled. “I’ll wake everyone up.”

  Giddon had an impish grin sometimes that made him look eight years old. “You’re the queen,” he said. “It’s your privilege to wake everyone up.”

  “That doesn’t mean I should!”

  “Want me to do it with you?” he said, then raised both arms above his head, punched the air with his fists, and shouted, “You can’t get me!”

  “Giddon!” she cried, half laughing. “Anyone who hears you will think you’re being attacked.”

  “I can breathe just fine!” he yelled. “You can’t knock me over!”

  Giving up, Bitterblue raised a fist. “I’m not going to vomit anymore!” she yelled.

  “No vomiting!” Giddon yelled.

  “I won’t drown!”

  “No drowning!”

  “I don’t care what you do!” Bitterblue yelled. “I feel great! I’m stronger than you!”

  “She feels great!” Giddon yelled. “She’s stronger than you!”

  “It’s not true, of course,” she said in a normal voice.

  “What isn’t?”

  Bitterblue looked at the moon, motionless above her, while the ground moved under her feet. “That I’m stronger than the sea.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But you’re stronger than the way the sea makes you feel.”

  * * *

  —

  Awake in her strange prison with moonlight on her face, Bitterblue couldn’t remember for a moment if the conversation with Giddon had been a memory or a dream. Wind pushed against the walls, sounding like the sea. She propped herself on her elbow, feeling pain in her hands and feet, the dryness of her nose, mouth, lips, the ache of hunger that was beginning to frighten her, badly. Had her captors forgotten about her? Did they mean her to starve?

  A shadow moved on the other side of the room and Bitterblue gasped. Then realized, as gold eyes flashed, that of course it was just the fox again; then had another fright as more eyes flashed around it. Multiple foxes? Is this a dream too?

  Suddenly the foxes swarmed across the room toward her, moving like a wave, then disappearing under the bed. She heard something vaguely metallic. Tiny fox feet, touching metal? Bitterblue didn’t understand what was going on, but she was awake now, and she knew she wasn’t on the ship.

  A key turned in the lock and the door swung open. Bitterblue was so surprised that she cried out.

  A woman stepped in—a girl?—young-looking, tall, short-haired, brown-skinned, balancing a tray. A lamp on the tray threw yellow light at Bitterblue, blinding her, but still, Bitterblue recognized her. This was the young woman who’d pulled her out of the sea.

  When the woman placed her tray on the floor, Bitterblue smelled stew. “Who are you?” said Bitterblue, straining to remember her Keepish, mopping her tearing eyes. “And what do you imagine you’re going to get out of this?”

  The woman lifted a small pot from the tray and came to sit at the end of the bed, fishing under the blankets for Bitterblue’s feet. Then, opening the pot, she began to apply a salve to Bitterblue’s aching skin that was so glorious that Bitterblue had to fight the instinct to let out an ecstatic cry.

  “I would like to import this excellent salve to Monsea,” she said, “once we’ve concluded my kidnapping. What do you say?”

  The woman ignored her.

  “Who are you?” Bitterblue said again. “Why are you doing this?”

  Silently, the woman began to unwrap Bitterblue’s bandages and apply the salve to her frostbitten toes. The relief from pain was immediate, and consummate. It was also throwing Bitterbl
ue’s hunger into such sharp relief that she was almost nauseated. She was finding it difficult not to lean out of the bed and stare at the bowl of stew on the tray by the door. She hoped it was thick with meat. It smelled thick with meat.

  She was trying to decide how much to say. Bitterblue seriously doubted that this woman, who was young, closed-faced, and avoiding her eyes, was in charge. Every time Bitterblue spoke, she looked more unhappy. “I want to know your plans for me,” she said.

  “We have one rule,” the woman said.

  Bitterblue was so startled to hear her finally speak that it took her a moment to be sure of the translation. “One rule?” she repeated.

  “One rule you must follow,” said the woman, her mouth tight with a misery that made her look very young indeed. She hates this, Bitterblue thought. Could I turn her into an ally?

  “What’s the rule?” she asked.

  “If there’s anything you want,” said the woman, “you will ask for it. I gave you the salve without you requesting it this time, so you would know what it was, but if you want it again, you will ask. Understand?”

  “Certainly,” said Bitterblue, who was beginning to feel a quiet, low hum of panic. Her captors weren’t going to give her whatever she asked for. This rule was a trick.

  “There’s nothing you want?” said the woman.

  Bitterblue wanted so many things. She wanted her heartbroken friends to know she was alive. She wanted to know who was holding her here, and what their plans were. She wanted to know where Giddon, Hava, and her advisers were right now, and if they were safe. She wanted rescue or escape. She wanted to kill whoever was in charge. The pain was returning to her feet, so she wanted more salve, and most of all, she wanted the stew on the tray.

  “There’s nothing I want,” she said.

  “Very well,” the woman said, standing, striding to the door. Bitterblue watched, aghast, as she returned the pot of salve to the tray, then lifted the tray in one hand. She reached for the doorknob.