Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  I feel like I’ve been sprung from a trap, he told Bitterblue, aching for her to be able to see this and feel that way too.

  * * *

  —

  It would not have been possible to find Nev’s house without her guidance, no matter if she’d given them the most detailed instructions. She continued to climb, fast and untiring, just as if she weren’t carrying a pack on her back. It was beginning to grow dark.

  In a part of the forest that smelled like sulfur, they wound their way among small, steaming pools of water.

  “Those ones are boiling,” Nev said. “Keep your distance. There’s a bath behind our house that’s warm and safe. We also have a barn that we use as a kind of inn for passing traders. I’m sure it’s nothing like what you’re accustomed to, but you’re welcome to stay there. I’m afraid our house is too small to accommodate you,” she added, in a voice that contained no apology, and the tiniest challenge.

  “I’ve slept in plenty of haystacks,” Hava said.

  “I spent my last birthday sleeping in a wedge of wet rock while moldy water dripped on my head,” Giddon said.

  “Show-off,” said Hava, switching into Lingian to deliver her insult.

  “Brat.”

  “Bully.”

  Giddon was relieved to see Hava’s grin. Hava had a way of peering out across the landscapes of Torla’s Neck, eyes narrowed and calculating, that made him feel like she was planning escape routes. “You know we need you for the Cavenda house operation, right?”

  Hava snorted. “Giddon, I am the Cavenda house operation.”

  A stone barn with a wood-shingled roof emerged through the trees, with a garden and a tiny stone house just beyond, smoke rising from its chimney.

  A sob caught in Nev’s throat, then she began to run.

  * * *

  —

  Nev’s father was the only person home, and he couldn’t have been more astonished to see Nev. Or more happy. He embraced her, this steel-haired man named Davvi who was as big as Giddon, tears streaming down his brown face. Nev and Davvi looked very much alike, tall, straight-shouldered. “And a fox kit?” he asked wonderingly.

  “We’re not bonded,” said Nev. “I’m just taking care of her. Papa, these are two of the Monsean delegates, Giddon and Hava. Have you heard the news of the Monsean delegates?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m so sorry about your queen,” Davvi said to them, with immediate and sincere feeling. “Have you eaten?” he asked next.

  He ushered them to a tiny table in a corner of the tiny, dark room, not asking why they’d come, bringing them bowls of a soup of meat and potatoes and thick, delicious slices of buttered bread. Then he stared happily at his daughter while she tried to explain the odd circumstance of their arrival. The silbercows’ stories, Quona Varana’s worries for her safety, her companions’ needs. “They have snooping to do,” she said. “We’ll have to organize a boat. There’s more to tell, but I’ll wait for Mama and Grandpa to get home.”

  Davvi waved this away almost with impatience, as if the Monseans’ needs were beside the point. He was so happy. It amazed him that his daughter should have flown home in an airship. He seemed to attribute it to the importance of the Monsean guests, then was concerned at Nev’s suggestion that Hava and Giddon sleep in the barn. He was the opposite of his daughter, his feelings always apparent, his doubts expressed with jumping eyebrows and cries of alarm.

  When Nev stood and offered to show them to the barn, Giddon let her and Hava step out of the house ahead of him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said quietly to Davvi.

  “Yes?”

  Giddon was feeling as if he’d slid out of his own body and was watching a large, bearded actor talk mechanically to a kind man. He understood where the strangeness was coming from. He had a question, and he was terrified of the answer. It would be better if he didn’t ask it.

  It burst out.

  “If silbercows see a person drowning,” he said. “Do they let them drown?”

  Davvi’s face moved with sympathy. “Silbercows are known for trying to save the lives of drowning humans. I don’t believe they would ever just watch a human drown.”

  “Then—if they do save a human, where do they take them?”

  “Wherever they can,” said Davvi. “Land, a ship, an airship. There are many happy stories. Sad ones too, I’m afraid, for sometimes the water’s too cold. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m just curious,” said Giddon.

  * * *

  —

  The barn was not what he’d expected. No beds of straw, no chilly drafts through ill-fitting shutters. Instead, he stepped into a long, cavernous, tall-ceilinged space with smells and flickering lanterns that reminded him of the horse stables of his childhood in the Middluns. Under the incurious gaze of one of the tallest cows Giddon had ever seen, Nev directed him to a corner of the barn where four small rooms had been built, clearly for the comfort of travelers.

  Giddon’s room was barely big enough for its furniture, and dark. He suspected he wouldn’t see any glass in Torla’s Neck until he reached the Cavenda house. But the room was clean, and warm from the heat of the brazier Nev lit for him. The bed was comfortable, his blankets soft.

  Lying down, Giddon watched the light his brazier threw against the even boards of the ceiling, listened to the rustle of the chickens whose coop was on the other side of the barn. He felt that his heart was being pulled apart.

  What if the silbercows had been showing him the story of Bitterblue’s rescue?

  But how could that be, when she’d never turned up anywhere alive?

  Bitterblue? he ventured, afraid of the thing he wanted more than anything. What do I do? How do I find out? And how will I survive, if it’s not true?

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Lovisa woke to the sound of crashing waves, her body colder, her muscles achier than they’d ever been before.

  She sat up, knocking sand out of the fur of her coat, then squinting at the glare of a bonfire that shot its flames into the sky. They’d followed the light of this bonfire last night, climbing up and down hills, keeping it in view. When they’d finally arrived, they’d found the beach already crowded with sleepers, huddled together in blankets. Beyond the fire, carts had been scattered across the sand, horses whickering softly, people moving among them. Lovisa hadn’t wanted to walk onto the beach, once she’d seen its inhabitants.

  But the Queen of Monsea had made a guess that a city beach like this one was populated by the continent’s poorer travelers and other ragtag citizens at night, and that two girls at loose ends would go unnoticed and unharmed, as long as enough of the others on the beach were women too.

  “We’ll make a better plan tomorrow,” she’d said, leading Lovisa to the fire. Well, now the sky was streaked with pink; it was morning. Lovisa hoped the queen would wake soon, with some ideas about that plan.

  * * *

  —

  The Queen of Monsea kept sleeping, despite all the clamor around them of wind and water, protesting horses, the shouts of waking people. Lovisa finally gave her shoulder a heartless shove.

  The queen pushed herself up sleepily, awkwardly. As she glanced around, her face to the light, Lovisa became aware of a new problem. The queen’s light brown skin and pale gray eyes were going to arouse curiosity. No one would mistake her as Keepish.

  “Where are you two from?” said a voice.

  Lovisa kept her expression flat as she turned to assess the speaker. It was a Keepish-looking woman who sat alone on a stump before the fire, apparently tending it, for as she waited for their response, she lifted a log from a stack at her side, leaned forward, and threw it onto the flames.

  Lovisa had never dealt with a woman like this before, rough and blunt, steel-colored hair jabbing its way out of her hat. She was wearing neither coat nor gloves as she handled the coarse, spl
intery wood. Her fingers looked like hard stubs.

  “Where are you from?” Lovisa said, surprised by the hoarseness of her throat and her own ragged voice.

  “I asked you first,” said the woman, with an icy smile.

  “And I need a sense of whether I can trust you before I answer.”

  The woman threw her head back and laughed. “Bold words for someone so little. Are you girls in trouble?”

  “Why are you asking?”

  The woman chuckled again. “Because I’m inclined to help girls in trouble. Of course, I can only help you to the extent you’re willing to trust me. You’ll have to decide that for yourselves.”

  Lovisa glanced at Bitterblue. The queen was gazing up at the city rising above the water, its hills, towers, and spires touched by the sun’s glow.

  “Beautiful,” Bitterblue said. Then she pulled off one of her many gold rings—Lovisa couldn’t remember seeing those rings on her fingers before, but she knew the Lienid tradition—and held it in the palm of her hand. “Do you know of a place where I could get a warm bath?” she asked the woman.

  This made the woman laugh again, then look upon them with something that really did feel like kindness, without self-interest.

  “I do, actually,” she said. “Far from the eyes of your wealthy persecutors.”

  “Do we so obviously have wealthy persecutors?” asked Bitterblue.

  “With your evasive answers, and those fine coats you’re wearing? And those thick golden rings on your fingers? I hear your accent too, girl. You should take those rings off if you don’t want rumors circulating about a wealthy Lienid girl on Trader’s Beach.”

  Bitterblue pulled her hands inside her sleeves. “Rumors about me are fine,” she said. “It’s my friend we don’t want people noticing.”

  “Interesting,” said the woman. “What else do you need, besides a bath?”

  “Nothing,” said Lovisa, who needed so many things. She needed to know what rumors were being told of a fire last night in Flag Hill. She needed to know how to get to the north, without an airship and without being recognized. And she needed the queen to stop talking so much.

  “Are you on the run?” asked the woman.

  “No,” said Lovisa, too quickly.

  “Mm-hm,” said the woman. “The proprietor of the bath I mentioned can help people on the run. Especially people who want to get far away, fast. Ask her about it, if you like, and show her your fancy rings. And don’t delay, for there’s a storm moving in.”

  How suspiciously easy, how amazing that this woman could provide every last thing they needed. “Why don’t you just point us toward this bath,” Lovisa said, with no real intention of visiting the bath, “and we’ll go.”

  “You won’t find it on your own,” the woman said. “I’ll provide someone to lead you.”

  “No,” said Lovisa. “We prefer to manage alone.”

  “But,” Bitterblue said to Lovisa, “do you know the route to your friend?”

  Lovisa responded in Lingian so that the beach woman wouldn’t understand. “How hard can it be? We follow the coast.”

  “Do you know the terrain?” asked Bitterblue, also in Lingian. “Do you know how to sleep outside in the cold?”

  “We’ll find hotels!”

  “Do you know for a fact that there are hotels? Hotels where you won’t be recognized, or our identities guessed? Won’t your parents ask at the hotels? We need to get you away from here quickly, without leaving a trail.”

  “‘Far away, fast’ means airships,” said Lovisa. “Airships mean the Varana family. What if this woman is trying to drop us into the lap of the Ledra elite?”

  “Does she really look to you like someone in league with the Ledra elite?”

  “Is this the better plan you promised?” said Lovisa hotly. “Trusting everyone we meet?”

  “We’re going to have to trust some people! At least occasionally!”

  “You need to start being honest about who you are,” Lovisa said. “People won’t hurt you if they know you’re the drowned queen.”

  “We need to get you someplace safe before we start throwing that truth around.”

  “Maybe do not assume that people you meet speak no Lingian,” said the woman, in rough but coherent Lingian.

  Lovisa looked up at her in slack surprise. The woman was studying Bitterblue with a dawning interest, but she spoke plainly. “This is Trader’s Beach,” she said, speaking Keepish again. “This is where the Royal Continent ships come in. We all understand a bit of every language that passes through. Just a tip, as you make your way up the coast.”

  “Ah,” said Bitterblue. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” the woman said. “As far as whom to trust, I’m Ona, and I live on this beach. I’m known as the firekeeper. Everyone knows me; ask whomever you like about me. I’m not going to sell two frightened girls to the wolves, certainly not to the Varanas. Anyone will tell you so. And I think that after all,” she said, flicking a glance at the ring Bitterblue still held in her palm, “I’m not going to take one of those rings, just for helping you find a bath.”

  It seemed to Lovisa that the part of her that decided things, always so clever and sharp and keen, was broken. She couldn’t sense the air around this woman. She couldn’t feel whether it was smart to trust her or not. But she knew they had to do something. She glared at Bitterblue, who was probably making bad, unsafe decisions from a place of impatience and desperation, and felt tears sliding down her cheeks.

  Except that Bitterblue didn’t look desperate or impatient. She looked confident and unruffled, curious. Happy. She reminded Lovisa of Mari, when he was telling her the latest thing he’d learned in one of his doctoring classes. And she reminded Lovisa of Nev, needing no one, sure of herself.

  Angrily, Lovisa flicked her tears away. She couldn’t trust Bitterblue, but she had no ideas of her own. She would trust the part of Bitterblue that reminded her of Mari and Nev.

  * * *

  —

  A Keepish girl who wouldn’t tell them her name led them to the bath, north along a seaside promenade. From there, Lovisa had a clear view of the clouds gathering on the horizon.

  To their left were cliffs that dropped to the water. Sometimes the path turned into wooden footbridges that crossed deep ravines. It was plain that the queen didn’t like the footbridges; she bolted across them, squeaking in alarm when they shifted or swung under her feet.

  “They’re designed to move with the wind,” said their guide, who was as small as Lovisa and the queen. Lovisa wondered if Ona had chosen this girl on purpose, to make them feel safe. So they’d be more easily taken in?

  “How much farther is it to the bath?” Lovisa asked.

  “Maybe an hour,” the girl said, “at this pace.” She led them off the path and away from the water, uphill, into a grove of trees. She kept glancing with big eyes at Bitterblue, which meant that the gossip had already begun. Bitterblue was eating, for Ona had given them bread, fruit, nuts for their journey. In fact, Bitterblue hadn’t stopped eating since the moment the food arrived. She chewed slowly, with a kind of reverence. Because my parents starved her, Lovisa thought.

  Their route steepened. At a high break in the trees, Lovisa stopped and looked back, trying to catch sight of Flag Hill.

  “What is it?” asked Bitterblue, stopping with her.

  Lovisa shook her head, wanting, needing to be left alone as she tried to find the place where her house had burned, and the Gravla house too. Needing to see with her own eyes what she’d done. Wishing she could spot her brothers, which was absurd, of course. But all she saw were hints of peaked roofs and more trees. She couldn’t find it.

  “Are you all right?” said Bitterblue.

  “Fine.”

  “We’re almost to the bath,” Bitterblue told her gently.

 
“Don’t patronize me,” said Lovisa.

  * * *

  —

  Lovisa had been to most parts of Ledra, usually transported in the Cavenda airship, which dropped her down exactly where she meant to go. She’d never been in the woods an hour’s hike north of Ledra, in a grove of conifer trees with a floor of uneven stones. Nor had she ever been instructed to keep to the higher stones so as not to leave footprints.

  It was foolhardy to follow a stranger into a forest, leaving no trace. But Lovisa had given up on sense. She’d given up on curiosity too. When the rocks turned to a visible path of packed snow, leading through the trees to a small, stone building with a neat wooden door, Lovisa only felt impotent and tired. How little she knew about her own home.

  They entered the building to find an elderly Keepish woman reading a book, surrounded by lamps and braziers, her feet propped on a desk. She narrowed her eyes at Bitterblue, then Lovisa, then flicked an inquiring glance at their guide.

  “Ona says hello,” the guide said.

  “Hello, Ona,” said the woman.

  “She says these two want a bath, then a conversation with Vera.”

  The woman nudged her chin at Bitterblue. “This one has a Royal Continent look.”

  “Rumor has it she’s the lost Queen of Monsea,” said their guide, “which we’re keeping to ourselves.”

  “You mean she’s one of the impersonators,” said the woman.

  “Nope,” said their guide, with a small flash of a smile. “The real thing.”

  The elderly woman raised her eyebrows, studying Bitterblue over her own extended legs. “I thought you drowned,” she said, like an accusation.

  “I didn’t,” said Bitterblue.

  “Well, isn’t that interesting,” said the woman. “The bathhouse is that way. Put your fancy clothing and shoes in one of the cabinets and wear a tunic. Then follow the stone path that starts at the green door.”