Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  Bitterblue couldn’t stop smelling her own skin.

  It smelled like soap, and she was the Queen of Monsea again, and Giddon and Hava were out there somewhere—were they safe? Would she be able to find them? Her thoughts were tumbling over each other and she couldn’t stop eating. In fact, all her appetites were returning.

  She kept picturing Giddon answering the door of his rooms, shirtless, with mud streaking his chest. She’d always noticed Giddon’s steadiness and size, she’d tucked herself against him and felt how attached he was to the earth, but she hadn’t known about his muscled shoulders, his chest, his arms, about how he looked half-dressed, and now she kept flushing with heat as she sat in the bath, eating fruit and hugging herself like she was trying to establish her own borders. She shouldn’t be thinking about this. The fox had told her that Benni Cavenda had murdered her two men. She should be making plans to avenge Mikka and Brek. Instead she was spinning like a ball on a string, unwinding from weeks of pent-up tension.

  Calm down, she kept telling herself. Calm down. You’re safe now.

  When Lovisa told her they’d be flying to Torla’s Neck in an illegal, unregistered, uninspected airship that looked like something one of her brothers would make, then clarified that none of her brothers was older than nine, Bitterblue went to Vera and asked if there was a dark room where she could lie down for a while. “I’m a little overwhelmed,” she said, speaking a thousand times more calmly than she felt. “Also, I’m afraid of heights and I get seasick. I’m concerned about this flight.”

  “Queen Bitterblue,” said Vera. It was the first time anyone had called her that since she’d fallen out of her royal ship into the sea, and it helped. It made her feel like a person contained in a body, rather than a ball of frantic fear unraveling all over Vera’s office. “We have teas in Winterkeep to help you with those feelings.”

  “You do?”

  “In particular, we have a tea called rauha. It helps with motion sickness, while creating a state of anxiety-free well-being.”

  “It sounds like magic,” said Bitterblue suspiciously. “There must be something wrong with it.”

  Vera nodded. “Certainly. It’ll turn you silly. You should perhaps not make any important decisions while under its influence. And it’s addicting if you take it every day, so you must use it only occasionally. You’re small,” she said, cocking her head sideways, surveying Bitterblue. “Your dose will be low.”

  “Is it legal?”

  “Yes, and regulated. That’s how we can be sure of your dose. Would you like to try some before night comes, as an experiment?”

  Bitterblue had the sense sometimes that her entire life was an experiment. Should she try this drug, being pushed upon her by a criminal smuggler? “Why do you operate illegal airships?” she demanded.

  Vera’s expression was as closed as ever. “Because a single powerful family in Ledra shouldn’t have a monopoly on an idea,” she said. “Especially an idea for which they overcharge.”

  “How did you get the technology? Please tell me that you do, in fact, use known technology?”

  “All you need is one genius who has a modest position as a chemist in a Varana factory, a few years to observe and experiment, and a disregard for the non-disclosure contracts she signs.”

  “I see.”

  “A single family shouldn’t have a monopoly on an idea,” Vera said again.

  “So your reasons are socialist,” Bitterblue said dryly. “And ideological.”

  A sudden, surprising smile broke across Vera’s brown face. “Sure,” she said. “Also, Kamassarian smugglers pay us a lot of money for them.”

  “You build them for Kamassarian smugglers?”

  “Or anyone Kamassarian who can promise to fly them only at night,” Vera said. “We sell to the occasional Borzan too. Now, how about it? Would you like to try our rauha? It, at least, is thoroughly legal.”

  She spoke with a pleasant sort of graciousness that made Bitterblue laugh suddenly, and want to trust her about the tea. What should I do? she thought. Giddon? And with that, the answer came to her easily, for if there was a tea that might comfort Bitterblue through some of the natural and unnatural terrors of her life, of course Giddon would want her to try it.

  “I’ll have the tea,” she said.

  “Good,” said Vera.

  Thus, Bitterblue floated peacefully across the nighttime sky, letting an ocean of stars sink into the backs of her eyes. It was a new moon. She found it, its orb in shadow, and wished she could point it out to Giddon. Remembering her dizzy nights on the ship watching the sky with Giddon, she examined her present feelings. I’m stronger than the way anything makes me feel, she told Giddon. I miss you. I miss you. Stay alive, so I can tell you how much I miss you.

  Then one logical, important, terrifying thought tore her mind away from Giddon. Lovisa. The girl stood across from Bitterblue at the edge of the little car, leaning out and looking down. Bitterblue didn’t like the tension in Lovisa’s shoulders, or how far she was leaning.

  Standing was too scary, so Bitterblue scooted across on the floor. “Lovisa?” she said, literally sitting at Lovisa’s feet.

  “What?” the girl said, in a voice like Bitterblue had woken her from a deep sleep.

  “Would you come sit down here with me?” she said. “I’m scared.”

  “I don’t believe you’re scared,” said Lovisa. “You drank rauha.”

  Bitterblue wondered if maybe rauha made you un-scared of being blown away or crashing or other imaginary terrors, but left you free to see the real, truly scary things that stood in front of your eyes. “Please?” she said. “I was also hoping you’d explain about . . .” She grasped for a topic. “The history of proprietary technology in Winterkeep.”

  Lovisa let out one long, irritated sigh. Then she slumped down beside Bitterblue like a rag doll, a girl stuffed with disappointments. For a while she said nothing. Eventually she began a monologue, expressed in a very bored voice, about Winterkeep’s proprietary attitudes toward airship and other technologies. She had a lot of opinions. Mostly her opinions were that all politicians in Winterkeep, and probably everywhere else too, were contemptible deceivers, motivated by money.

  It was fascinating to hear someone so young speak so knowledgeably, and so cynically, about Winterkeep’s political parties. Eventually, Bitterblue forgot that she’d asked the question in order to keep Lovisa from jumping out.

  * * *

  —

  In early morning, the airship landed in a field that looked like a piece of night sky as they descended, so thick was it with scattered lamps. Bitterblue didn’t understand the landing process. It seemed to involve people in the airship shooting small hooks at nets positioned on the ground.

  When it was time to disembark, she climbed down the ladder, stumbled into the snow, then fell.

  “It’s my land legs,” she said as Lovisa and one of the flying team hauled her back up again. “And my intoxication.” Then a random man appeared out of the darkness and made her jump.

  “Which way to wherever we’re going?” she asked him, in Lingian. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, repeating the question in Keepish, then beginning to giggle.

  “Well now, where are you going?” asked the man, who was broad-chested and deep-voiced, with glasses that glinted from the light of the lantern he carried. He seemed surprised to be accosted by a small, swaying woman.

  “I have no idea,” Bitterblue responded, patting his chest as she enunciated each syllable. “My, my. Your chest is nice.”

  “Thank you,” he said, chuckling.

  “Um,” said Lovisa, hastily interjecting. “We’re looking for the home of a girl named Nev who studies animal medicine at the Winterkeep Academy.”

  “And where does she live?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lovisa, “beyond that she’s in Torla’s Neck.
We left in a hurry.”

  “Okay,” the man said doubtfully, then pointed toward pure darkness. “I recommend you go that way until you find a trodden path atop a cliff. Then head north—to the right on the path—until you reach a small town set against some trees. Ask someone to direct you to the Magistry office there. Maybe they can help you find your friend.”

  “You’re very kind,” said Bitterblue.

  “Wait until the sun rises,” he said. “A person who’s been drinking whatever you’ve been drinking shouldn’t try to find a cliff path in the dark.”

  “I’m terrified of heights, you see,” said Bitterblue. “So I drank some rauha, to help me with the illegal airship. I’m the Queen of Monsea,” she said, taking his hand and shaking it vigorously. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “And I’m the Lord of Lost Souls,” he said with good-natured amusement, then found them a couple of rocks to sit on until there was more light to guide their way.

  From her rock seat, Bitterblue watched with interest as the people on the ground did some sort of exchange with the flyers in the airship, passing them small crates and taking crates from them. More smuggling? Then the airship rose into the sky again, a glow of pink in the east making Bitterblue wonder how far they would get before daylight presumably grounded them.

  Before the Lord of Lost Souls and his companions melted into the darkness, he put some bread and cheese into their hands and entrusted Lovisa with a flask of water. “I think your friend is coming down,” he said to Lovisa, indicating Bitterblue, who’d pulled her coat tight against the cold that was becoming more noticeable to her, and was quietly weeping. “Keep her hydrated.”

  “I’m all right, you know,” said Bitterblue. “I’m crying from happiness and relief.”

  “She really is the Queen of Monsea,” said Lovisa.

  “Sure she is,” said the man. “Second one I’ve met this month. It should be light enough for cliff-walking in half an hour. Don’t dawdle. There’s a storm coming in, and houses are few and far between in these parts. You’ll be walking well into the afternoon before you reach that town. Good luck.”

  Bitterblue turned a beatific smile upon him. “Good luck to you too,” she said, “in your life of crime.”

  His grin flashed in the darkness. He turned to go, then turned back and called out. “If it starts to snow hard,” he said, “explore the land inland from the path. There are hidden huts.”

  Then they were gone.

  * * *

  —

  As the sun rose, Bitterblue felt more herself. But she was also bone tired, and thirsty. Her blistered foot smarted terribly.

  She’d never seen a place so vast and dramatic as Torla’s Neck. The cliff to their left dropped to a black sand beach with crashing waves that pounded so hard that sometimes she imagined the feeling of the impact in her legs. To the right, the land stretched out in hills that climbed to fir trees. Beyond the fir trees, mountain peaks alternated with strange, wrinkly formations that Bitterblue suspected were glaciers. She wanted to ask Giddon, tell Giddon. If he was truly in the north as the fox had said, had he seen those glaciers? Was he somewhere among these hills?

  “Gorgeous,” said Bitterblue. “Just unbelievably gorgeous. Will it be obvious when we reach the town? Or will it be mostly empty, like this?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lovisa.

  “What did you say your friend’s name was?”

  “Nev.”

  “Do you know her family’s names?”

  “She doesn’t have a family name. Poor people in Winterkeep don’t have family names.”

  “Yes, but do you know the names of her family members?”

  “Oh,” said Lovisa. “Hang on, let me think. My friend dated her for a while. Grandpa Saiet,” she said, after another moment. “Mari was always making me listen to stories about Nev’s stupid grandpa Saiet. And her father might be Davvi?”

  “Okay, that’s helpful. What are their professions?”

  “Are you going to ask me questions endlessly, all morning long?”

  “Oh, Lovisa,” said Bitterblue, then held back her sigh, frightened of how close Lovisa walked to the cliff. Of the long looks Lovisa kept taking, down at the sea.

  “Will you tell me about your brothers?” she said.

  “What do you want to know about them?” demanded Lovisa.

  “How many do you have? What are their names? How old are they? What do they like?”

  “Viri is five. Erita is seven. Vikti is nine. And it hardly matters what they like, because no doubt everything they owned got burned in the fire I started.”

  “I’m sure they got out safely,” Bitterblue said.

  “I know they did,” Lovisa snapped. “I told them to get out before I ever set it.”

  “They’ll remember that you warned them, their whole lives,” said Bitterblue, who had distinct memories of such moments from her own otherwise muddled childhood, memories of her mother, of attendants, even of her father’s advisers, doing things, saying things, to protect her from her father. “They’ll always be grateful to you.”

  “I guess you know everything about my family,” said Lovisa viciously.

  Bitterblue bit back on a sharp retort. “I know it’ll hurt your brothers if they never get to see you again, and never get to hear an explanation from your lips,” she said. And then she did something scary: She abandoned Lovisa to her thoughts and decisions, left her alone on the cliff, and climbed into the hills. Because it had started snowing, and the clouds at sea worried her. They were tall and dark and seemed to be growing closer. She thought it wouldn’t hurt to follow the advice of the Lord of Lost Souls; she also wanted Lovisa to have a job to do.

  “Where are you going?” Lovisa yelled after her.

  “You see those clouds?” she said. “I’m looking for one of the huts that man told us about. My foot is killing me. Do you know anything about feet? I need you to look at my foot.”

  Grumbling, Lovisa joined her.

  * * *

  —

  It took a great deal of scrambling on and off the path to find any sort of hut. By the time they did, it was snowing hard, sharp flakes whipped their cheeks, and Bitterblue was becoming truly frightened.

  They might have found the hut sooner if it were actually a hut, rather than just a wooden door in the side of a hill. The door stuck too; both women had to push it together.

  Inside, the walls were made of dirt, reinforced with wooden supports positioned close together. The floor and ceiling were wooden too, and fine, smooth. Posts stood upright all across the room, presumably bracing the ceiling, which held the weight of the hill above. A stack of firewood sat near a stove with a chimney, which surprised Bitterblue so much that she ran outside to find the capped metal pipe that popped out of the hill, perfectly visible once you knew it was there, but otherwise camouflaged among rocks.

  More than that, the hut had two mattresses with pillows and blankets, a low table, a lamp full of oil, a small collection of books, plates and cutlery, and food. “Ship food,” Bitterblue said with pleasure, looking through the containers of dried meat and fruits, nuts, and biscuits hard as rock. “Biscuits to dip into tea,” she said, when the next tins produced dried, pungent leaves.

  “It’s useless without water,” Lovisa said.

  “Maybe they presume that if you’re here in a storm, you can melt snow for water,” said Bitterblue.

  “You can do what you want,” said Lovisa. “I don’t drink snow-water tea in dirt rooms.”

  Briefly, Bitterblue lost her temper. She grabbed a pot, marched out of the hut, and plunked it onto the ground. She watched with screaming impatience as practically none of the fast-falling snow landed in the pot. Who did Lovisa think she was, trying to out-snob a queen? Did she imagine that Bitterblue wanted to spend this day in a claustrophobic hut in a hill, instead o
f looking for the friends who thought she was dead? Her own sister! And Giddon, Giddon!

  “Balls!” she shouted, in Lingian.

  Then she jumped as Lovisa’s curious voice spoke behind her. “What does balls mean?”

  “Balls,” Bitterblue repeated in frustration, as if that were an explanation. Then she said the word in Keepish, but Lovisa was clearly unenlightened.

  “Like, balls to play a game with?” said Lovisa. “Is that a swear word in Lingian?”

  “No!” said Bitterblue. “Like a man’s scrotum!”

  “Oh! You call that balls?”

  “Yes!”

  “We call it kittens,” said Lovisa. “Because they’re so delicate.”

  This undid Bitterblue. She laughed so hard that she had to lean her hand on Lovisa’s shoulder, gasping. “That’s my favorite thing in Winterkeep,” she finally said.

  “That’s fair,” said Lovisa, “since mainly you’ve been trapped in an attic.” Then she smiled, a smile that made her look so young suddenly, and so sad, that all Bitterblue could think was that she was going to help this girl, one way or another.

  “What do you think?” she said, even though she’d already decided. “I badly want to go on. But it’s snowing hard and I’m quite sure my foot is bleeding again.”

  “There are horror stories about people who get caught in storms in Torla’s Neck,” said Lovisa. “If you want us to stay in this hole till it stops, I don’t care. Anyway, neither of us slept much last night.”

  “That’s true,” said Bitterblue, relieved.

  Inside, Lovisa sat on one of the mattresses, her back propped against the wall, and watched as Bitterblue started the fire. Then Lovisa began to remove her shoes and socks.

  “They don’t smell good,” she said, holding her socks out to the queen, “but you should wear them. Those shoes are rubbing your feet raw.”

  “If I take your socks away, the same will happen to your feet.”

  “I don’t mind hurting,” Lovisa said simply. Then she laid herself down.