Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  “We should sail away and never come back,” she said.

  To where? Giddon wanted to ask. No matter where they went, Bitterblue wouldn’t be there.

  * * *

  —

  The Monsea bobbed gently, her fat dock lines growing taut, then slackening with her movement. Snow sat on her furled sails. Linny, a Dellian sailor, and Ozul, a Keepish one, were in the rigging with long brooms, knocking off the snow.

  The familiar elegance of the ship speared him, her teal hull bright against the gray water and her three slender masts reaching for the sky. She wasn’t big compared to other ships in the harbor, but she was graceful, the shape of her hull sleek in the distinctly Royal Continent style. More often than not, he’d thought of the Monsea mostly as a floating house that was going to make Bitterblue sick. Her beauty now made him feel very far from home.

  Most of the crew was nowhere to be found, but Bitterblue’s guards, Mart and Ranin, who were staying on the ship with the sailors, came out to shake their hands, looking ashamed of themselves. These two big, broad-handed men would probably live the rest of their lives feeling ashamed of themselves, thought Giddon.

  The captain, Annet, was in the wheelhouse, a fur hat pulled over her long, pale hair. When she saw them, her face went quiet. Annet had been among those who’d dragged Giddon out of the ocean.

  “It’s wonderful to see you,” she said, holding out a hand to Giddon, then Hava.

  “And you.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  Hava always became respectful and almost shy around Annet, a remarkable transformation Giddon had noticed but couldn’t begin to understand. Annet was Monsean, in her mid-thirties, with ruddy pink cheeks, hair she kept tied back, and wire glasses. As the ship’s captain, she was steady, competent, commanding, but so were a lot of people in Hava’s life, and only Annet seemed to have this effect.

  “We were hoping you could provide cover for us as we do some sleuthing,” Hava said. Then she proceeded to tell Annet, with perfect honesty, everything they knew and suspected about the sinking of the Seashell. Everything! Without even checking with him. Giddon trusted Annet, but that didn’t mean he would’ve told her everything.

  Annet listened with a crease between her eyebrows. “So, you need to ask these boat people questions, but you don’t want to be witnessed doing so?”

  “Exactly,” said Hava.

  “What boating company is it?”

  “One called Ledrami.”

  “Ah,” said Annet. “They’re here now and then.”

  “Here on the Monsea?” said Giddon, surprised.

  “Our Ozul is friends with some of that crew. She used to crew for a boating company in Ledra before she came to the Royal Continent. We all visit each other in the harbor here,” said Annet, smiling. “We have a card game in the salon pretty often. There’s always someone off watch.” She pushed herself up from her stool, went to the wheelhouse door, and shouted up at the sky. “Ozul!”

  When the Keepish girl came stamping into the wheelhouse a few minutes later, she smiled to see Giddon and Hava, her eyes filling with tears. She was brown-skinned and tall, broad, strong, a scarlet scarf at her throat and a fur hat pulled over her hair.

  “Ozul,” said Annet, switching into Keepish, “are any of your Ledrami friends coming over today?”

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Can you come back in a few hours?” Annet asked Giddon and Hava.

  * * *

  —

  At the harbor amble, where Hava and Giddon went to kill some time, the glassy eyes of fish stared up at them from tables. Children played jacks, sitting on uneven flagstones in alleys smelling of fish guts.

  When a small rubber ball bounced sideways, Giddon caught it without even thinking, then dropped it into the waiting hand of a little girl who came marching over to glower up at him as if he were a thief. “Royal Continent?” she demanded in Keepish. “Where are you from?”

  “We’re from Monsea,” said Giddon politely.

  “We have a Monsean clock in our shop,” said the girl, then pointed with her entire arm at a shop across the street that displayed a thousand small devices in the window. She was glaring at Giddon with outraged expectation.

  “Lovely,” said Giddon. “Thank you.” Then he crossed to the shop.

  “If I were six, would you do whatever I said?” asked Hava, following him.

  Giddon had a sudden vision of a six-year-old Hava stomping her feet and bossing him around, stern, but full of earnest feeling. “Probably.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  But the shop, which was the sort where you found yourself wanting things you previously hadn’t known existed, soon absorbed Hava’s attention as thoroughly as it did Giddon’s. Clocks, typewriters, microscopes, compasses, all scratched from use but polished to a high shine, were tucked among unfamiliar devices. He found something with a mother-of-pearl handle and spinning arms that looked like it might be an eggbeater, so pretty and so redolent of some history in a foreign house that he briefly wondered if he could find a use for it. Then he reached instead for a small, golden tube shaped like a spyglass, extended it, looked into it, and saw nothing but darkness.

  “That’s for making stars,” the shopkeeper called, from her desk at the front. “Here, bring it to me. I’ll show you.”

  At the desk, the shopkeeper demonstrated how to aim the tube toward a light source, then, with one’s eye to the eyepiece, move it around. Pinpricks of light appeared and danced inside the eyepiece.

  “Go stand in the doorway and aim it at a bright patch of sky,” the woman said, then chuckled at the surprised noise Giddon made as bright stars moved and slid inside the tube. “It’s a starmaker from Mantiper,” she said. “You’re looking at the actual night sky in there, every star in its proper place.”

  “What?” said Giddon, incredulous. “How?”

  “It contains a compass and a level, so it knows which way you’re pointing. There’s a light filter inside that moves depending on where you point it, showing you a representation of the actual location of stars at midnight, in the Mantiperan capital, on the first day of the Mantiperan year. Not that I’ve ever tried to compare it to the night sky in Mantiper! I bought it from a Mantiperan ship captain.”

  Someone pushed past Giddon into the shop.

  “Yes, of course, come right in,” said the shopkeeper with an ironic sort of amiability that Giddon noticed, then dismissed. He was busy trying to find familiar constellations that would support or disavow what the shopkeeper had said about the starmaker.

  Then he felt a soft hand tugging him back inside and submitted to it, letting Hava pull him into a hidden corner of the shop. When he raised inquiring eyebrows, Hava cocked her head toward the person who’d come in.

  Peeking around a stand of shelves, Giddon saw a blond woman in a pale yellow coat, standing in the middle of the store with her chin high, hands raised, and eyes closed. Giddon recognized that stance, as if she were sensing the air with her fingers. And of course he recognized the woman.

  Bile rose in his throat.

  “What are you looking for this time, Graceling?” asked the shopkeeper dryly.

  “A pocket watch,” said Trina, not changing her position. She’d aged. Giddon remembered someone who’d seemed little older than he, but lines now crossed her pale skin, bunching around her eyes. She looked weary, actually, washed out, as she stood there with hands raised. Giddon hoped her every day was an exhausting slog.

  “Whose pocket watch?” said the shopkeeper.

  “A man named Stava.”

  “The fishmonger from two doors down?” said the shopkeeper, offended. “Did he send you in here particularly?”

  “No. I’m just being thorough.”

  “Well,” said the shopkeeper, somewhat mollified. “I know you have to earn your
keep, but you’ll find no stolen goods here. I bought every item, and at a fair price too.”

  Trina paused in her sensing and turned to the shopkeeper, one eye so dark it might be black, one pale yellow like her coat. She seemed about to speak. But then she noticed Giddon, standing straight and tall. Immediately something closed in her face.

  “You recognize me,” said Giddon.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You might’ve had some loyalty,” he said, “for the people who helped you and the queen who took a risk to shelter you.”

  A small flare came alive in her mismatched eyes. “You’d be surprised by the number of people who think I owe them my loyalty,” she said. “Everyone thinks they’ve done me a favor.”

  “A favor?” said Giddon. “Is that what I did for you?”

  “You shuffled me from one place where people wanted to use me to another place where people wanted to use me.”

  “And so you decided to start using people yourself?”

  “How would you know what it’s like?” Trina said scornfully, looking Giddon up and down. “When in your life have you ever lacked anything you want or need? When have you ever had to mistrust why someone wants to be your friend? Everyone has something they want from me. Everyone fawns and pretends, because they think I’m the solution to some problem in their life. If they’re Estillan, they think I owe them something because I was Estillan once. If they’re Monsean, it’s because I was Monsean. If they’re Keepish, it’s because they paid me for a job once and now they think we have some sort of understanding. I don’t owe you anything.” Her voice ended on the smallest sob.

  Giddon was about to deliver a sharp retort. Then, unaccountably, Trina added, “I was sorry to hear about your queen.” The statement confounded him, not just what she said, but the way she said it, as if she were a different person suddenly, tired, and sad, and truly sorry.

  “I—thank you,” he said.

  “I believe she had a hard life,” she said. “I believe she would have understood mine. I was sorry to hear about your envoy too. Mikka, the one who drowned with his friend Brek. He came to me once. He knew I was the one who’d told about the zilfium, but he didn’t try to put the burden of what people did with that information onto my shoulders,” she said, her voice suddenly hardening again, growing sharper. She paused, swallowed. “He wanted my help. He was both polite and generous. I would have helped him, if I could.”

  Beside Giddon, Hava stepped forward slightly. Caught and held Trina’s mismatched eyes so Trina could see her own.

  “May I ask what he wanted your help with?” said Hava.

  Trina seemed to be considering Hava’s face. She raised her chin, a slight defiance. “I never knew for sure,” she said. “He and Brek had gone north and come back. There was something there they wanted me to see if I could find.”

  “Something they’d lost in the north?” said Hava.

  “No. Something they’d found there. Something they wanted confirmation of. But before we met again so he could give me the details, they drowned.”

  “Where did they go in the north?” said Hava.

  “I don’t know,” said Trina, her voice beginning to rise again. “You ask a lot of questions. I know who you are and I think you know what it’s like to be used, but that doesn’t mean you get to use me.”

  Trina took a step back. She glanced once at the shopkeeper, who’d quietly watched the entire exchange. Then she turned on her heel and exited the shop.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Two of Ozul’s friends who crewed for the Ledrami boating company came to the Monsea that afternoon to play cards. They were happy to sit with Giddon and Hava in the salon first, drinking tea as the room bounced lightly on the small swells of Ledra’s harbor.

  One was a Keepish woman named Sorit. The other, a man named Riz, was Kamassarian. Both had been working in the harbor the day the Seashell foundered. Both remembered that a new, Kamassarian-speaking crew of six sailors had sailed the Seashell, setting off practically the instant the Monseans arrived.

  “It’s not odd for a leasing party to hire their own crew,” said Riz. “But I do remember thinking it was odd for anyone to hire a crew who didn’t speak their own language!”

  “I think Mikka spoke some Kamassarian,” said Hava.

  “Maybe that accounts for it,” said Riz.

  “And what do you know about the accident?” asked Giddon.

  Riz and Sorit shared a blank look. “Nothing,” Sorit said.

  “Nothing?”

  “The Seashell was never seen again,” said Sorit. “Of course, a few people saw her entering open water, but after that, nothing. It’s a big ocean. We did a full-scale search the next day and found no sign, but by then, we weren’t expecting to. The sea takes everything.”

  “Isn’t it strange that no one survived in the lifeboats?” said Giddon.

  “There was only one lifeboat on board the Seashell,” said Riz. “We don’t know what made the ship sink. If it was fire, the lifeboat could’ve been damaged. Or, it could’ve capsized in a wind. The weather on the Brumal Sea can get violent very fast.”

  “How was the weather that day?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” said Sorit, squinting like she was trying to remember.

  “Don’t you remember what Katu Cavenda said when he came back ashore?” Riz said.

  “Katu?” said Giddon, keeping his voice even. “He also sailed that day? What did he have to say?”

  “He was out in this little yacht he has, this beautiful slender craft he travels and races in,” said Riz. “Usually he handles her all by himself. You have to admire his skill. He came back laughing, said it was so blustery, he’d almost capsized.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said Sorit, “wasn’t that also the day a couple of fishing ships lost their nets? The waves tore them right off the ships.”

  “Yes,” said Riz, “I remember that too. It’s why we all got a little worried when it started to get dark and the Seashell wasn’t back.”

  “Did Katu say anything else?” said Giddon. “I don’t suppose he mentioned the Seashell?”

  “We did talk about the Seashell, actually,” said Riz, “because Katu asked if I’d seen an airship go by full of people speaking Kamassarian, heading north. We hadn’t, but it was a funny coincidence, of course, so I told him about the crew of the Seashell.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Giddon. “Why would he ask you that? Would an airship full of Kamassarians be significant?”

  “I don’t know,” said Riz, shrugging. “Katu has all kinds of friends. Maybe he thought he recognized them.”

  “I see,” said Giddon. “I don’t suppose you know anything about our Monsean men going north before they drowned?”

  “I can tell you that if they went north, it wasn’t in the Seashell,” said Riz. “I don’t know anything beyond that.”

  * * *

  —

  Hava and Giddon walked back to Quona’s house in relative silence.

  “Any foxes?” Giddon finally said.

  “I haven’t even been looking,” said Hava. “My mind is with Mikka and Brek.”

  “Me too,” said Giddon. And Trina, he didn’t add, not quite ready to articulate all the reasons that exchange had upset him.

  “That Trina’s a touchy one, isn’t she?” said Hava. “‘O how I suffer,’ and all that?”

  Giddon began to laugh. “Is that how you’d describe it?”

  “The shopkeeper told me that people in the harbor amble hire her to find their stolen treasures. She lives above a bait shop, two blocks away from that store.”

  “Does she?” said Giddon, who would’ve expected something more glamorous, had he considered it yesterday. Now he just felt lost and out of sorts. He’d bought that starmaker, because he hadn’t been able to help himself. Bitter
blue would have loved it; it was the sort of thing she would’ve kept close, as a treasure. It thumped in his pocket as he walked.

  “Hava,” he said, “do I use you?”

  “Oh, ugh,” said Hava. “I knew this was coming.”

  “There was something in what Trina said.”

  “Okay then, do I use you?” said Hava. “When we’re at a party and I let you do all the talking while I hide? Or let you carry everything with your big muscles? Or let you distract everyone by looking all handsome and stuffed with valor?”

  “How do you manage to be so insulting while giving compliments?”

  “She was feeling sorry for herself. Do you always take everything to heart?”

  “Not everything.”

  “You don’t use me,” said Hava. “If you did, I’d be sure to let you know.”

  “That’s true,” said Giddon ruefully.

  Now Hava was the one laughing. “Giddon,” she said. “Could we please talk about what we’ve learned? We know our men went north. While they were there, it sounds like they found something, something they wanted Trina to confirm.”

  “A discovery they were probably killed for,” said Giddon.

  “Right,” said Hava. “The day they were killed, someone hired them a Kamassarian crew. The crew scuttled the ship, then someone, probably whoever’d hired them, picked the crew up in an airship and carried them north.”

  “Right,” said Giddon. “There are some holes and we’re making some assumptions, but that sounds like the size of it.”

  “So,” said Hava. “How can we discover what they found in the north?”

  “We need to know where they went,” said Giddon. “There’s a lot of Winterkeep to the north.” Ahead, the Cliff Farm came into view, cows spotting the hillside. Beyond it, the glass of Quona’s windows glinted in the light from the sea.

  “Quona went north today, incidentally,” said Giddon. “Did she tell you?”

  “I managed to avoid her this morning.”

  “The Varanas have some property somewhere. She said she might be gone overnight.”