Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  And that was it. No questions or demands, not even much in the way of surprise that the drowned Queen of Monsea should land on their doorstep. Who were these people?

  Lovisa and the queen did as they were told, undressing in a strange, bare stone room with wooden cabinets lining the walls, pulling on brown, shapeless tunics that hung on hooks. Under Ferla’s coat, the queen was still wearing Lovisa’s pajamas. Lovisa tried not to stare at her pale, too-thin body as Bitterblue took the pajamas off, or cringe at how she smelled. My parents did that to her, for almost three weeks, she thought, trying to feel sorrow, or anger, or shame. But all she felt was numbness.

  “What is it?” said Bitterblue.

  “Nothing,” said Lovisa. “Those are my pajamas.”

  Passing through a green door, they emerged into the shock of a freezing morning. A stone path, cold on their feet, led them away from the bathhouse. One of the queen’s feet was bleeding. She left red spots on the stones and winced as she walked, but she was cradling a pear like it was her precious child, and she was glowing with happiness.

  At the pool, pale blue and steaming, Lovisa found the stone steps and descended straight into the water, crouching low until her body was submerged to the neck. Then she closed her eyes, not caring what the queen did, because a perfect warmth hugged her, embracing her with comfort that she didn’t deserve. She dipped her face below the surface so the queen wouldn’t see her sudden, inexplicable tears. But she couldn’t hide the noises she was making, gasping, blubbering, sobbing. Weak. Stop it. Stop it!

  Quietly, with annoyingly perfect tact, the queen moved away into a different part of the pool, where she ate her pear and pretended not to mind Lovisa’s hysterics. She set the pear core on the pool’s edge. Submerging her head, she seemed to be pushing her hands roughly through her hair, loosening her braids, scrubbing her scalp with her fingers. Then she noticed one of the yellow clumps of soap that sat at the edge of the pool.

  “Oh,” she said in a voice of veneration, then spent some time using the soap, applying it carefully, wonderingly, the same way she ate her food. “This is one of the best and most-needed baths of my life,” she said.

  “One of?” said Lovisa, who was more under control now. “How many times have you been kidnapped before this?”

  Bitterblue smiled. “My life hasn’t always been soft.”

  “Is this your idea of a soft life? Bathing in a rough public pool in a scratchy tunic, with somebody’s leftover soap?”

  Bitterblue only smiled again, closed her eyes, and ducked under the water. Lovisa didn’t know why she kept throwing sharp little stones, launching them with hot bursts of breath, but every time they failed to wound, it made her want to throw them harder. Because that’s who she was: a girl who burned down her own house, attacked her own mother, abandoned her little brothers.

  She stood abruptly, left the water, and marched back to the bathhouse. There, she made herself wait outside in the cold, shaking as the wind chilled the water on her skin, until she couldn’t bear it anymore.

  Weak, she thought to herself ferociously. Then she let herself inside.

  * * *

  —

  Sometime later, Lovisa and Bitterblue met Vera in yet another stone room, tucked among trees down another winding path. Lovisa had been to public baths before. None of them were isolated like this, or empty of patrons, or peppered with tiny, hidden, chimneyless rooms, or cloaked in so much secrecy.

  Vera was gray-haired, tough, and expressionless, as the firekeeper and the bath monitor had also been. “Are you all sisters?” Lovisa asked.

  Vera ignored this. “I’ve been hearing some unlikely rumors,” she said, peering with hard eyes at Bitterblue. “But there are plenty of dark-haired girls with Royal Continent looks on our roads, saying they’re the lost Queen of Monsea.”

  “Really?” said Bitterblue, quite surprised. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “She means impersonators,” said Lovisa.

  Bitterblue was astonished. “You mean impersonators of me?”

  “Traveling actors,” said Lovisa, shrugging. “They put on a show. Like, dancing or something.”

  “Dancing!” said the queen, her voice more delighted and more incredulous with every word. Then she laughed, like a sweet, clear bell. “The kind of dancing where you keep your clothes on, or take them off?”

  “You two have quite a patter going,” said Vera, unimpressed. “Where do you want to go?”

  “We’re not telling you that,” said Lovisa, in the same moment the queen said, “North.”

  “How far north?” said Vera. “Hardippa? Torla’s Neck? Kamassar?”

  “Hardippa,” said Lovisa in an attempt at misdirection, in the same moment the queen said, “Torla’s Neck.”

  “You might want to consult with each other,” said Vera, “before you start putting your money down for things. Though I understand you’re the one likely to pay,” she added, turning her eyes to the queen. Bitterblue handed her a ring, which she considered closely.

  “I have cash,” said Lovisa, hearing her own childish belligerence and not understanding it. Who cared where they went? Who cared who paid?

  “Let’s save it,” said Bitterblue quietly, “until we really need it. My rings are replaceable.”

  Vera was now studying Bitterblue more closely, with a new, amused gleam in her eyes. “Besides,” she said, “I think that after all, I’d like a ring or two. I have a feeling that someday, they’ll be souvenirs of a very interesting story.”

  “Oh?” said Bitterblue. “You’ve changed your mind about whether I’m an act?”

  “My colleagues are quick to believe stories,” she said. “I believe gold. I know the difference between the rings worn by the Lienid commonfolk and the rings they don’t ever wear. Though I suppose you could be a thief,” she added, still peering at Bitterblue critically. “But that would also be an interesting story.”

  “What exactly are we paying for with these rings?” Lovisa said. “We’re not boarding an airship leased from the Varanas.”

  “Indeed you’re not,” said Vera. “We’ll leave as soon as the sky is dark, and have you in Torla’s Neck by morning. Until our departure, you’re welcome to enjoy the comfort of our baths again, or the bathhouse.”

  “The baths or the bathhouse? Nighttime is hours from now!”

  “There’s nothing I can do about that,” said Vera. “No number of fine gold rings will make the earth turn faster.”

  * * *

  —

  Back in the bathhouse, the queen began to strip off her coat.

  “You’re bathing again?” said Lovisa.

  “My whole body hurts,” Bitterblue said. “It hurts less in the bath.”

  “Where did you get all your rings?” said Lovisa, watching them flash as the queen undressed. “I’m sure you weren’t wearing them the first time I saw you.”

  “I found them,” said Bitterblue.

  “In the attic room?” said Lovisa, surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” said Lovisa, slipping her hand into her pocket, touching Katu’s ring.

  “May I ask,” said Bitterblue, “if you know anything about my delegation? Hava, Coran, Barra, Froggatt? Giddon?”

  “I heard that Coran, Barra, and Froggatt went to Kamassar,” said Lovisa. “Giddon and Hava stayed in Ledra. They came to dinner at my house one night and I caught them snooping in my father’s desk.” How angry she’d been about that, once. “I didn’t know you were in our attic then,” she added defensively, not actually sure she would’ve told them if she’d known.

  The queen only nodded. “Did they find anything?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “How much do you know about what’s going on?”

  Lovisa’s fingers closed around her uncle’s ring. It was a small, hard, sharp r
eminder of why she’d done all the things she’d done. She pulled it out and sat beside the queen.

  “This is what Hava and Giddon would’ve found,” she said, “had they known how to open the hidden drawers in my father’s desk.”

  “Katu’s ring,” said Bitterblue.

  Lovisa was astonished. “You know my uncle’s ring?”

  Bitterblue glanced once, thoughtfully, into Lovisa’s face. “I know your uncle,” she said. “He visited my court a while back, for rather a long time. The first time I saw you, in fact, I thought of him, because of your hair.”

  “Oh, of course,” said Lovisa, remembering Katu’s stories about visiting the Monsean queen. Irrationally resentful, suddenly, of their time together in a place Lovisa had never been. “His ring made that much of an impression on you?”

  Bitterblue shrugged with one small shoulder. “Rings matter to the Lienid. Do you know what happened to him? Have you heard from him since he started traveling?”

  “He hasn’t written,” said Lovisa, who no longer had any doubt about why. “And he’s been drawing money from his bank using checks in places like Kamassar and Borza, but I also found these in the desk.” She fished Katu’s identification papers and checkbook from her coat pocket and passed them into the queen’s hands.

  The queen examined this new evidence soberly. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “I’m sure he’s dead,” said Lovisa, her voice flat and hard.

  “I’m holding out hope until we know for certain.”

  “Oh? And how exactly will we ever know? Do you think they erected a sign over his body or something?”

  Bitterblue’s eyes touched Lovisa’s with a kind of gentleness that irritated Lovisa further. “I intend to learn every single detail of what’s going on,” said the queen. “I believe it’s a story that touches my own kingdom, which means I need to know.”

  “Why should Katu’s murder touch your kingdom?” said Lovisa, with a sudden, vicious stab of jealousy. “He’s not your uncle.”

  “I think he was murdered because he knew about things that touch my kingdom.”

  “What things, then?”

  The queen hesitated. “Lovisa,” she said, “how much do you want to know?”

  Lovisa’s fingers closed so tightly over Katu’s ring that it hurt her palm. “What you mean by that is that my parents have done even more bad things, besides kidnapping you, murdering Pari, and probably Katu.”

  “Yes,” said Bitterblue.

  Lovisa stared at her hand. At the way her knuckles showed a paler brown because of how hard she was holding Katu’s ring. She’d heard them arguing, after all. Her parents had had some kind of plan. Her father had been hiding something important in a banker’s box. The Estillan envoy had been involved.

  “I’ll have to know eventually,” she said dully. “It’s not like I can live my life never knowing.”

  “How about I promise to tell you what I know,” said Bitterblue, “but not right now?”

  Lovisa was thinking of the cave her mother had used to tell her about, where she and Katu had been sent when they were children, as a punishment. Lovisa imagined it vast and secret, with smooth, curved walls and high ceilings, far removed from regular life, a place to hide, and not so scary if Katu was there too. She wished she could live in that cave, alone, touched by nothing. “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Are you coming into the bath?” asked the queen.

  “No,” said Lovisa, who needed solitude.

  “All right,” said Bitterblue, removing her shoes, inspecting the burst blister on the bottom of her foot. Touching Lovisa with worried glances.

  “I would like to return my uncle’s ring to his body,” Lovisa said.

  “I understand that,” said Bitterblue. “Things like that have meaning. I had one ring that was unique and irreplaceable, and more important than any others. It was one my mother wore, in honor of me.” She held her palms open and examined them, as if she were looking for something there. “It slipped off while the silbercows were rescuing me,” she said. “It’s at the bottom of the Brumal Sea.”

  How nice to have a mother to mourn, instead of parents you wished were dead.

  Lovisa shouldered her way out of the room and into the cold.

  * * *

  —

  Lovisa had done a lot of sneaking in her life, poking where she didn’t belong, but never in a forest.

  She knew the path from the bathhouse to Vera’s office, so she headed down that path now. She noticed that it wasn’t the most direct route to Vera’s office; rather, beginning with a scramble of high rock, it veered off the wrong way at first. For misdirection? The footprints and packed snow began again after the scramble of rock, but someone standing at the bathhouse wouldn’t be able to see that. The path turned to high rocks again as she neared Vera’s office. A stranger who found Vera’s office first would likely not find the bath.

  She didn’t go into Vera’s office. Instead she searched the office’s perimeter for more groups of rocks that could make a footprint-free path. She saw two options: one easier path with high, flat boulders, the other with sharp, sloping rocks that lined the crest of a winding ridge.

  Seeing no reason to make this harder than necessary, she chose the easier route. For three minutes or so, she stepped from boulder to boulder, sometimes needing to jump, once using an overhanging limb to swing herself across a gap. Eventually, the boulders petered out into untouched snow. This was a path to nowhere.

  She turned back. When she reached Vera’s office, Vera was standing there, watching her arrival.

  Lovisa ignored her.

  “You’re an interesting one,” Vera said.

  “How are we getting to Torla’s Neck?” Lovisa said.

  “There’s some news from the city,” Vera said. “Two houses burnt down in Flag Hill.”

  Lovisa stopped. Said nothing, just looked at Vera with as much dispassionate boredom as she could muster.

  “The fire was started by a suicidal girl named Lovisa Cavenda who lived in one of the houses,” said Vera. “Then spread to the other house when an airship exploded. The mother of the girl, who happens to be President Ferla Cavenda, was injured by falling wood. The daughter is presumed dead. Sad story, isn’t it?”

  Lovisa swallowed. “Was anyone else hurt besides the president and the daughter?”

  “No,” said Vera.

  Her brothers were safe.

  “But there’s talk of changing the laws about how airships are docked,” Vera said, “now that we see what happens if the dock catches fire.”

  Her mother was alive and her brothers were safe. And her parents were using the fire as an opportunity to ruin her reputation and pretend she was dead.

  Her brothers probably believed that story. Mari probably did too. Lovisa’s voice was rough. “How much does it cost to send a signal message from Torla’s Neck to the Magistry in Ledra?”

  “That depends,” said Vera. “If you’re reporting some sort of crime, and if you have credible evidence of the crime, it doesn’t cost anything.”

  “The Queen of Monsea is pretty credible evidence,” said Lovisa.

  “I expect you’re right,” said Vera, with a quick smile that looked more like a grimace. Then she said, “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” said Lovisa.

  For the first time, a softness touched Vera’s face. To avoid the way it made her start to feel things, Lovisa turned and began scaling the second rock path, the one that looked uneven and difficult. Once she was on it, she found that it had deceived her, for with every step, a clear, flat surface met her feet. It was designed to look more treacherous than it was.

  “Don’t you worry about what you find out there, Lovisa Cavenda,” said Vera. “I don’t know what brought you here with the Monsean queen, but we’ll get you to Torla’s Neck safe.”


  * * *

  —

  What Lovisa found was a trail of trampled snow that led to a clearing. An enormous white sheet was stretched across the clearing between the trees, like a high roof. Lovisa understood that it was meant to look like a snowy field to any airships passing above.

  Below the sheet was something resembling a toy airship her brothers might have made out of junk they’d found around the neighborhood on garbage collection day. It was tiny. The passenger area, which was roofless, was smaller than the smallest rowboat Lovisa had ever seen. The balloon, made of patches of some unrecognizable fabric, was pitiful, as if a real airship had had a baby that now lay sleeping, dreaming it could fly. The entire thing, car, sails, balloon, mast, boom, lines, was painted black.

  Lovisa climbed inside. She wanted to see the varane tank that supplied the balloon with gas. When she found it, she started to laugh. It looked like something built of cheap tin and battered under the hooves of horses.

  It was strange, the way she couldn’t feel fear anymore. It was as if a balloon of nothingness had replaced her insides. She didn’t care if this illegal pseudo-airship fell out of the sky while they flew to Torla’s Neck.

  No. That wasn’t quite true, because her brain was starting to work again, ever since hearing that her brothers were safe. Where were they? Who was caring for them? Maybe Viri, Erita, and Vikti would never forgive Lovisa for what she’d done. But she could still send a message to the Ledra Magistry. With the queen’s help, she could get her parents put into prison, couldn’t she? In prison, they would be far away from the boys. Surely that would be better. Someone would take care of them, right? Someone competent, who didn’t ruin everything, the way she did. Lovisa wanted a different life for her brothers than the one she’d lived. She wanted more for them: more choice, less punishment, less fear. She didn’t need to be able to feel her feelings to know that that was true.

  Chapter Thirty-two