Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(18)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue gave him her hand, tiny and strong. His own hands were long, beautifully formed, with ink rimming the fingernails. And strengthless. She used her own strength to move her hand where he pull ed it. He brought her fingers to his mouth. He kissed them.

"Thank you for what you did," he whispered. "I always knew you'd be lucky for us, Sparks. We should have cal ed you Lucky."

"How are you feeling, Teddy?"

"Tel me a story, Lucky," he whispered. "Tel me one of the stories you've heard."

There was only one story in her mind: the tale of Princess Bitterblue's escape from the city eight years ago with Queen Ashen, who'd hugged the princess hard and kissed her, kneeling in a field of snow. And then given her a knife and sent her on ahead, tell ing her that though she was only a little girl, she had the heart and the mind of a queen, strong and fierce enough to survive what was coming.

Bitterblue pull ed her hand away from Teddy's. She pressed her temples and rubbed them, breathing carefully to calm herself.

"I'll tell you the story of a city where the river jumps into the sky and takes flight," she said.

SOMETIME LATER, SAF shook her shoulder. She woke, startled, to find herself snoozing in the hard chair, neck twisted and rigid with pain. "What is it?" she cried.

"What happened?"

"Shh!" said Saf. "You were crying out, Sparks. Disturbing Teddy's sleep. I figured it was a nightmare."

"Oh," she said, becoming conscious of a monumental headache. She reached up to bring down her braids, releasing her hair, rubbing at her aching scalp. Teddy slept nearby, his breath a gentle whistle. Tilda and Bren were climbing the stairs together to the apartments above. "I think I was dreaming that my father was teaching me to read," Bitterblue said vaguely. "It was making my head hurt."

"You're a strange one," Saf said. "Go sleep on the floor by the fire, Sparks. Dream something nice, like babies. I'll bring you a blanket, and wake you before dawn."

She lay down and fel asleep, dreaming of herself as a baby in her mother's arms.

Chapter 9

BITTERBLUE RAN BACK to the castle in a thick, gray dawn. She raced the sun, hoping, fervently, that Po wasn't planning to ruin her breakfast again. Find something useful to do with your morning, she thought to him as she neared her chambers. Do something heroic in front of an audience. Knock a child into the river while no one's looking and then rescue him.

Entering her rooms, she found herself face-to-face with Fox, who stood in the foyer with a feather duster. "Oh," said Bitterblue, calculating fast, but not coming up with much in the way of a creative excuse. "Bal s."

Fox regarded the queen calmly with unmatching gray eyes.

She wore a new hood that was just like the old one, the one Bitterblue was wearing at this moment. The difference between the two women was marked: Bitterblue small , plain, guilty, and not particularly clean; Fox tal and striking, with nothing to be ashamed of.

"Lady Queen," she said, "I won't tell a soul."

"Oh, thank you," Bitterblue said, almost light-headed with relief. "Thank you."

Fox bowed her head, stepped aside, and that was that.

Minutes later, soaking in the bath, Bitterblue heard rain, thudding on the castle roofs.

She was grateful to the skies for waiting until she'd gotten home.

* * * * * RAIN STREAMED DOWN the canted glass roofs of her tower office and raced into the gutters.

"Thiel?"

He was at his stand, pen scritching across paper. "Yes, Lady Queen?"

"Thiel, Lord Danzhol said some things after he knocked you out that worry me."

"Oh?" Thiel set his pen down and came to stand before her, all concern. "I'm sorry to hear that, Lady Queen. If you'll tell me what he said, I'm confident that We'll be able to resolve it."

"He was some sort of crony of Leck's, wasn't he?"

Thiel blinked. "Was he, Lady Queen? What did he tell you?"

"Do you know what it meant to be a crony of Leck's?"

Bitterblue asked. "I know you don't like questions like that, Thiel, but I must know the basics of what happened, you see, if I'm to know how to help my people."

"Lady Queen," said Thiel, "my reason for disliking such a question is that I don't know the answer. I had my own run- ins with King Leck, as you know, as I expect we all did, and would all prefer not to talk about. But he would disappear for hours, Lady Queen, and I haven't the foggiest notion for hours, Lady Queen, and I haven't the foggiest notion where he would go. I know nothing beyond the bare fact that he would go. None of your advisers do. I hope you'll trust me on that, and not trouble the others. We've only just got Rood back into the offices. You know he's not strong."

"Danzhol told me," Bitterblue lied, "that everything he stole from his people, he stole for Leck's sake, and that other lords stole from their people for Leck too. That means there are other lords and ladies out there like Danzhol, Thiel, and it also means that there are citizens from whom Leck stole who could benefit from remuneration. You do understand that the crown is liable to these people, Thiel? It will help us all move forward to settle such debts."

"Oh, dear," Thiel said, steadying a hand on her desk. "I see," he said. "Lord Danzhol, of course, was mad, Lady Queen."

"But I've asked my personal spies to make some inquiries, Thiel," Bitterblue improvised smoothly. "It seems that Danzhol was right."

"Your personal spies," Thiel repeated. His eyes were beginning to shift to confusion, then to a kind of blankness, so quickly that she reached out to stop him.

"No," she said, pleading with the fading feeling in his eyes.

"Please, Thiel, don't. Why do you do that? I need your help!"

But Thiel was wrapped in himself, not speaking, not seeming to hear.

It's like being left alone in a room with a shell, thought Bitterblue. And it happens so fast. "I'll just have to go down and ask one of the others," she said.

A rough voice came out of the middle of him somewhere.

"Don't leave me quite yet, Lady Queen," he said. "Please wait. I have the right answer. May I—may I sit, Lady Queen?"

"Of course!"

Heavily, he did so. After a moment, he said, "The trouble lies with the blanket pardons, Lady Queen. The blanket pardons, and the impossibility of ever proving, beyond doubt, that those who stole, stole for Leck and not for themselves."

"Wasn't the very reason for the blanket pardons the assumption that Leck was the true cause of all crime?"

"No, Lady Queen," said Thiel. "The reason for the blanket pardons was the acknowledgment of the impossibility of our ever knowing the truth about anything."

What a depressing notion. "Nonetheless, someone needs to provide reparation to those who were victimized."

"Don't you think, Lady Queen, that if citizens wished your reparation, they would tell you so?"

"Do they have means?"

"Anyone may write the court a letter, Lady Queen, and every letter is read by your clerks."

"But do they know how to write?"

The eyes Thiel trained on her face were awake now, and fil ed with a perfect comprehension of her meaning. "After yesterday's argument, Lady Queen," he said, "I chal enged Runnemood on the matter of the literacy statistics. I'm sorry to say that he admitted that he has, in fact, been embel ishing them. He has a habit of . . . erring on the side of optimism in his representations. It is," said Thiel, clearing his throat delicately, "one of the qualities that makes him a valuable agent of the court in the city. But of course, he must be transparent with us. He will be from now on. I've made that plain to him. And, yes, Lady Queen," Thiel added firmly. "Enough of your citizens know how to write; you've seen the charters. I maintain that if they wished reparation, they would write."

"Wel then, I'm sorry, but it's not good enough, Thiel. I can't bear to walk around knowing how much this court owes people. I don't care whether they want it from me or not. It's not fair for me not to give it."

Thiel considered her silently, hands folded before him. She didn't understand the peculiar hopelessness in his eyes.

"Thiel," she said, almost begging. "Please. What is it? What's wrong?"

After a moment, he said quietly, "I understand you, Lady Queen, and I'm pleased you came to me about this. I hope you always will come to me first with such matters. Here is what I recommend: Write to your uncle and ask his advice.

When he visits, perhaps we can discuss the way to proceed."

It was true that Ror would know what to do and how best to do it. It wasn't terrible advice. But Ror's visit was scheduled for January, and it was only just September.

Perhaps, if she wrote to him, he could send suggestions ahead of his visit, in letters.

THE RAIN WAS soporific, throwing itself against her glass roof and the stone of her round wal s. She wondered what it was like in the great courtyard today, where water pounded on the glass ceilings and overflow from the gutters poured into a fat rain pipe that snaked down the courtyard wall , ending with a gargoyle that vomited rainwater into the fountain pool. On days like this, the pool overflowed onto the courtyard floor. No water was wasted: It found drains in the floor that led to cisterns in the cel ars and the prison.

It was impractical, the courtyard flood that accompanied rainy days. It was a strange design, easy enough to reverse. Except that it did no structural damage in a courtyard that had original y been built to be rained on; and except that Bitterblue loved it, on the rare occasions when she was able to escape her office to see it. The tiles on the floor surrounding the fountain were adorned with mosaics of fish that seemed to flop and swim under the sheen of water. Leck had intended the courtyard to be dramatic in the rain.

When Darby pushed into the room with a pile of papers so high that he needed both arms, Bitterblue announced that she was taking a walk to the royal smithy to order a sword.

But good heavens, they responded, did she realize that to reach the smithy, one must cross the grounds, in the rain? Had it not occurred to her that it would save time to summon a smith to her tower, rather than go herself? Had she not considered that it might be viewed as unusual— "Oh, for mercy's sake," Bitterblue snapped at her advisers.

"I'm proposing a walk to the smithy, not an expedition to the moon. I'll be back in a matter of minutes. In the meantime, you can all return to work and stop being annoying, if such a thing is possible."

"At least take an umbrel a, Lady Queen," pleaded Rood.

"I won't," she said, then swept out of the room as dramatical y as possible.

STANDING IN THE east vestibule, peeking through an arch at the pounding water of the fountain, the swirling water on the floor, the gurgling water in the drains, Bitterblue all owed the noise and the earthy smel of it all to soothe her irritation.