Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(21)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Great gaps of meaning, thought Bitterblue, taking a breath, breathing air through the phrase. Yes. "You're going to do a wonderful job, Teddy," she said. "Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's."

"You only used one word beginning with P in that sentence," said Teddy dreamily.

The door opened and Saf stuck his head in, glaring at Teddy. "Have you divulged our every secret yet?"

"There were no P-words in that sentence," said Teddy, half asleep.

Saf made an impatient noise. "I'm going out."

Teddy woke right up, tried to sit up, then winced. "Please don't go out if it's only to look for trouble, Saf."

"When do I ever have to look for it?"

"Wel , at least bandage that arm," he insisted, proffering a bandage from the small table beside his bed.

"Arm?" said Bitterblue. "Did they hurt your arm?" She saw, then, the way he was holding his arm close to his chest.

She got up and went to him. "Let me see," she said.

"Go away."

"I'll help you bandage it."

"I'll help you bandage it."

"I can do it."

"One-armed?"

After a moment, with an irritated snort, Saf stalked to the table, hooked his foot around a chair leg, yanked the chair out, and sat. Then he pushed his left sleeve to his elbow and scowled at Bitterblue, who tried to keep her face from showing what she felt at the sight of his arm. The entire forearm was bruised and swol en. A long, even cut, fully the length of her hand, ran along the top, neatly stitched together with thread, the dark reddish tinge of which came, she knew, from Saf 's own blood.

So, pain was at the base of Saf's fury tonight. And perhaps humiliation? Had they held him down and cut him deliberately? The incision was long and neat.

"Is it deep?" Bitterblue asked as she bandaged it. "Did someone clean it properly and give you medicines?"

"Roke may not be a queen's healer, Sparks," Saf said sarcastical y, "but he does know how to keep a person from dying of a flesh wound."

"Where are you going, Saf?" asked Teddy wearily.

"To the silver docks," said Saf. "I got a tip tonight."

"Sparks, I'd feel better if you went with him," Teddy said.

"He's more likely to behave if he knows he needs to look after you."

Bitterblue was of a different opinion. Touching Saf 's arm, she could almost feel the tension humming in his body. He had an instinct toward recklessness tonight, and it was rooted in his anger.

And that was why she went with him—not so that he would have someone to look after, but so that someone, no matter how small and reluctant, would be there to look after him.

IT WAS GOOD that she was a strong runner, or Saf might have left her behind.

"Word is that Lady Katsa arrived in the city today," Saf said. "Is that true? And is Prince Po still at court?"

"Why do you care? Planning to rob them or something?"

"Sparks, I'd sooner rob myself than rob my prince. How is your mother?"

His strange, persistent courtesy toward her mother seemed almost funny tonight, what with his rough appearance and his madcap way of barreling through the wet streets as if he were looking for something to smash. "She's wel ,"

Bitterblue said. "Thank you," she added, not certain, at first, what she was thankful for. Then realizing, with a small implosion of shame, that it was for his adamant belief in her mother.

At the silver docks, the river wind pushed the rain right through to their skin. The ships shivered and dripped, their sails tied up tight. They were not really as tal as they looked in the darkness. Bitterblue knew that; they were not ocean vessels but river ships, designed to carry heavy loads north against the current of the River Del , from the mines and refineries in the south. But they seemed massive at night, looming over the piers, silhouettes of soldiers lining their decks, for this was the landing place of the kingdom's wealth.

And the treasury, where that wealth is kept, is mine, Bitterblue thought. A nd the ships are mine, and they're manned by my soldiers, and they bear my fortune from the mines and refineries that are also mine. This is all mine, because I am queen. How strange it is to think it.

"I wonder what it would take to storm one of the queen's treasure ships," Saf said.

Bitterblue smirked. "Pirates make attempts now and then— or, so I've heard—near the refineries. Catastrophic attempts. For the pirates, I mean."

"Yes," Saf said, an irritable edge to his voice. "Wel , each of the queen's ships contains a small army, of course, and the pirates wouldn't be safe with their loot anyway, until they'd escaped into the sea. I bet the sweep of river from the refineries to the bay is wel patrol ed by the queen's water police. It's no easy task to hide a pirate ship on a river."

"How do you know all that?" Bitterblue asked, suddenly uneasy. "Great seas. Don't tell me you're a pirate! Your parents snuck you aboard a pirate ship! They did! I can tell just by looking at you!"

"Of course they didn't," he said with a long-suffering sigh.

"Don't be daft, Sparks. Pirates murder and rape, and sink ships. Is that what you think of me?"

"Oh, you make me crazy," Bitterblue said tartly. "The lot of you sneak around thieving and getting knifed, except for when you're writing abstract books or printing Lienid- knows-what in your printing shop. You tell me nothing and then you get all huffy when I try to understand it on my own."

Saf turned away from the docks into a dark street Bitterblue didn't know. Near the entrance to what was obviously a story room, he faced her, grinning in the darkness.

"I've done a bit of treasure hunting," he said.

"Treasure hunting?"

"But I've never been a pirate, and never would, as I like to think you'd know without me having to tell you, Sparks."

"What is treasure hunting?"

"Wel , ships go down, you know. They're wrecked in storms, or they burn, or they founder. Treasure hunters come later and dive to the floor of the sea, looking for treasure to salvage from the wreck."

Bitterblue studied his battered face. His conversation was amiable enough; fond, even. He liked to talk to her. But he had not lost any of his earlier anger. Something hard and hurt sat in his eyes, and he held his injured arm close to his body.

This sailor, treasure hunter, thief—whatever he was— should be in a warm, dry bed tonight, recovering his health and his temper. Not thieving, or treasure hunting, or whatever he'd come out here to do.

"It sounds dangerous," she said with a sigh.

"It is," he said. "But it's not il egal. Now, come inside. You're going to like what I steal tonight." Swinging the door open, he gestured her into the yell ow light and the steam, the smel of bodies and musty wool, and a low-throated rasp that pull ed Bitterblue forward: the voice of a fabler.

ON THE COUNTERS and tables of this story room, pots and buckets pinged with a tinny rhythm of fall ing drops.

Bitterblue shot a dubious glance at the ceiling and kept to the edges of the room.

The fabler was a squat woman with a deep, melodious voice. The story was one of Leck's old animal tales: a boy in a boat on a frozen river. A fuchsia bird of prey with silver claws like anchor hooks—a gorgeous, mesmerizing, vicious creature. Bitterblue hated the story. She remembered Leck tell ing it to her, or one very similar. She could almost see Leck right there on the bar, one eye covered, the other gray, keen, and careful.

An image flickered then and flashed bright: the terrible wreck of the eye behind Leck's eye patch.

"Come on, let's go," Saf was saying. "Sparks. I'm done here. Let's go."

Bitterblue didn't hear him. Leck had removed the patch for her, just once, laughing, saying something about a horse that had reared and kicked him. She had seen the globe of his eyebal swol en purple with blood and had thought that the vivid crimson of the pupil was a bloodstain, not a clue to the truth of everything. A clue that explained why she felt so plodding and stupid and forgetful so much of the time— especial y every time she sat with him, wanting to show off how wel she read, hoping to please him.

Saf took hold of her wrist and tried to tug her away.

Suddenly she was awake, galvanized. She swung out at him but he grabbed that wrist too, held her in a double grip, and muttered low, "Sparks, don't fight me here. Wait til we're outside. Let's go."

When had the room gotten so crowded and hot? A man sidling too close to her said in a voice too smooth, "Is this golden fel ow giving you a hard time, boy? Do you need a friend?"

Saf spun on the man with a growl. The man backed away, hands raised, eyebrows raised, conceding defeat, and now it was Bitterblue grabbing on to Saf as Saf pushed after the man, Bitterblue grasping Saf 's injured arm intentional y to cause him pain, to turn his fury back onto her, whom she knew he would not hurt, and away from everyone else in the room, whom she was less certain about.

"None of that," she said. "Let's go."

Saf was gasping. Tears brightened his eyes. She'd hurt him more than she'd meant to, but perhaps not more than she'd needed to; and anyway, it didn't matter, because they were leaving now, pushing through the people and scrambling out into the rain.

Outside, Saf ran, turned into an all eyway, and crouched low under the shelter of an awning. Bitterblue followed him and stood above him as he cradled his arm to his chest, swearing bloody murder.

"I'm sorry," she said, when he final y seemed to be switching from words to deep breaths.

"Sparks." A few more deep breaths. "What happened in there? I lost you. You weren't hearing a word I said."

"Teddy was right," she said. "It helped you to have me to look after. And I was right too. You needed someone to look after you." Then she heard her own words and shook her head to clear it. "I really am sorry, Saf—I was somewhere else. That story transported me."

"Wel ," Saf said, standing careful y. "I'll show you something that'l bring you back."

"You had time to steal something?"

"Sparks, it only takes a moment."

He pull ed a gold disc from his coat pocket and held it under a guttering streetlamp. When he flicked the disc open, she took the edge of his hand, adjusting the angle so that she could see what she thought she saw: a large pocket watch with a face that had not twelve, but fifteen hours, and not sixty, but fifty minutes.

"Feel like explaining this to me?"

"Oh," he said, "it was one of Leck's games. He had an artist who was bril iant with small mechanics and liked to tinker with timepieces. Leck got her to make pocket watches that divided the half day into fifteen hours, but ran through them more quickly to make up the difference.