Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(47)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Ashen's father, her brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. Her oldest brother, Ror, the king. The people she missed who'd never met Bitterblue but would someday. Her rings, flashing in the water.

All of that was real, thought Bitterblue stubbornly.

She remembered a rough spot on one of the tiles of the tub that had scraped her arm from time to time. She remembered pointing it out to Ashen. Marching now to the tub, she was able to find the sharp little spot immediately.

"There," she said, fingering it with a furious sort of triumph.

It was the minutes spent in Helda's room, remembering the feeling of a different time, that caused Bitterblue to become curious about another missing piece, and wonder if it might answer any of her questions. She wanted, final y, to see the rooms that had been Leck's.

THE HORSE IN the sitting room hanging that covered Leck's door had sad green eyes that stared into Bitterblue's. Its forelock hung into those eyes, a more violet blue than the dark, deep blue of its fur, making her think of Saf. Helda helped her push the hanging aside.

The investigation of the door behind did not take long. It was solid, immovable wood, tight in its frame, and it seemed to be locked. There was a keyhole, and Bitterblue remembered Leck using a key. "Who do we know who can pick locks?" she asked. "I've never seen Saf do it, but I wouldn't put it past him. Or, I wonder if Po could find us the key?"

"Lady Queen," said a voice behind them, making Bitterblue jump. She turned to find Fox in the doorway.

"I didn't hear the doors open," said Bitterblue.

"Forgive me, Lady Queen," said Fox, stepping into the room. "I didn't mean to take you by surprise. If it's any use to you, Lady Queen, I have lock picks that I've been learning how to use. I thought it might be a practical skil for a spy,"

she said, a bit defensively, when Helda gazed at her with eyebrows raised. "It was Ornik's idea."

"You seem to be developing a friendship with the handsome young smith," said Helda evenly. "Just remember that while he is a Council all y, Fox, and though he helped us with the matter of the crown, he is not a spy.

He has no right to your information."

"Of course not, Helda," said Fox, sounding mildly offended.

"Wel ," Bitterblue said. "Do you have the lock picks with you?"

Fox produced from her pocket a cord on which hung an assortment of files, picks, and hooks, tied together so they wouldn't jingle. When she pull ed away the tie, Bitterblue saw that the metal was scratched and rough in places, rust smoothed away.

It took Fox several minutes of fiddling, which she performed careful y, on her knees, her ear to the door. Final y, a heavy click sounded. "That's it," she said, standing, grasping a handle, then pushing. The door didn't move. She tried pull ing.

"I remember that it opened in," said Bitterblue. "And I never saw him struggling with it."

"Wel then, something is blocking it, Lady Queen," said Fox, pushing harder on the wood with her shoulder. "I'm quite sure I've unlocked it."

"Ah," said Helda. "Look." She pointed to a place in the middle of the door where the sharp tip of a nail peeked through the surface of the wood. "Perhaps it's boarded up from the inside, Lady Queen."

"Boarded and locked," said Bitterblue, sighing. "Is either of you any good at mazes?"

* * * * * AS FOX AND Bitterblue descended the stairway that had dropped Bitterblue into Leck's maze once before, Fox explained her theory about mazes: once inside, one should choose one hand, the left or the right, put it to the wal , then follow the maze all the way through, keeping that same hand to the wal . Eventual y, one would reach the heart of the maze.

"A guard did something like that with me last time," said Bitterblue. "But it won't work if we happen to start against a wall that's an island, detached from the rest of the maze,"

she added, thinking it through. "We'l put our hands on the right-hand wal . If we end up where we started, then We'll know it's an island. We'll take the next possible left turn, then return to putting our hands on the right-hand wal . That'l work. Oh," she said in dismay. "Unless we come up against another island. Then We'll have to do it all over again, plus, keep remembering what we've already done. Bal s. We should've brought markers to put down in the passageway."

"Why don't we just try it, Lady Queen," Fox said, "and see how it goes?"

IT WAS QUITE disorienting. Mazes were made for Katsa, with her unreal sense of direction, or Po, who could see through wal s. Luckily, Fox had had the foresight to bring a lamp. After exactly forty-three turns with their hands on the right wal , they came upon a door in the middle of a corridor.

The door, of course, was locked.

"Wel ," said Bitterblue as Fox knelt again and began her patient poking, "at least we know this one can't be boarded up from the inside. Unless the person boarded up both doors, then stayed inside to die, and we're about to find his rotted corpse," she said, chuckling at her own morbid joke.

"Or unless, of course," she added, groaning, "there's a third way to exit Leck's rooms. A secret passage we don't know about yet."

"Secret passage, Lady Queen?" said Fox absently, her ear to the door.

"The castle seems to be ful of them, Fox," said Bitterblue.

"I had no idea, Lady Queen," said Fox. A quiet click sounded. When Fox grasped the door handle and pushed, the door swung open.

Holding her breath, not certain what to steel herself against, but steeling herself nonetheless, Bitterblue stepped into a dark room ful of tal shadows. The shadows were so human in form that she let out a gasp.

"Sculptures, Lady Queen," said Fox calmly, behind her. "I believe they're sculptures."

The room smel ed of dust and had no windows. It was cavernous and square with no furniture, except for a single, massive, empty bed frame in the center of the room. The sculptures, on pedestals, fil ed the rest of the space; there must have been forty of them. Walking among them with Fox and the lantern was a bit like walking among the shrubberies of the great courtyard at night, for they loomed in just the same way, all seeming as if they were about to come alive and start striding around.

She could see that they were the work of Bel amew.

Animals turning into each other, people turning into animals, people turning into mountains or trees, all with a vitality, a sense of movement and feeling. Then the lamp caught a strange blotch of color and Bitterblue realized something was peculiar about these sculptures. Not just peculiar, but wrong: They were slapped over with gaudy, bright paint of every color, paint that made spatters all across the rug.

She had expected weapons of torture in this room, perhaps. A col ection of knives, stains of blood. But not ruined art arranged on a ruined rug, surrounding the skeleton of a bed.

He destroyed the sculptures in his rooms. Why?

The wal s all around were covered with continuous hangings. A field of grass, turning to wildflowers, then into a thick forest of trees that gave way to wildflowers again, then to the field of grass it had started with. Bitterblue touched the forest on the wal , just to assure herself that it wasn't real, only a hanging. Dust rose; she sneezed. She saw a tiny owl, turquoise and silver, sleeping in the limbs of one of the trees.

Built into the back wal of the room was a door. It led to nothing more than a bathing room, functional, cold, ordinary. Another door opened to a closet space, empty and choked with dust. She could not stop sneezing.

A third doorway in the back wal , this one a simple opening with no door, led to a spiral staircase climbing up. At the top of the stairs was a door so thoroughly nailed over with boards that it was difficult to catch a glimpse of the door itself. Bitterblue pounded and cal ed Helda's name. When Helda responded, her question was answered: This was the staircase that led up to Bitterblue's sitting room and the blue horse hanging.

Down the steps again, Bitterblue said to Fox, "It's creepy, isn't it?"

"It's fascinating, Lady Queen," said Fox, stopping before the room's tiniest sculpture, staring at it, mesmerized. It was a human child, perhaps two years old, kneeling with arms outstretched. A girl with something knowing in her eyes.

Her arms and hands were turning to wings. Her wispy hair was sprouting feathers, her toes turning into talons. Leck had slapped a streak of red paint across her face, but it didn't manage to deaden the expression in her eyes.

Why would he try to ruin something so beautiful? What is the world he was trying, and failing, to create?

What is the world Runnemood is trying to create? And why must they both create their worlds by destroying?

Chapter 27

IN THE MORNING, Madlen arrived, rebandaged Bitterblue's shoulder wound, gave her medicines, and commanded her, with clear and specific instructions, to take them, even the bitter ones that were nauseating to swal ow. "They will help your bones knit together, Lady Queen," she said, "faster than they could on their own. Are you doing the exercises I prescribed?"

The sun rose while Bitterblue grumbled over breakfast, but dimly. When she dragged herself to the windows in search of light, she discovered a world of fog. Fighting to make out the back garden through the whiteness, she thought she saw a person standing on the garden wal . The person threw something into the garden, a small , slender, gliding thing, bright white and slashing a streak through the thick air.

It was Po with his stupid paper glider. As she recognized him, he raised an arm in greeting to her, then lost his balance, spun both arms like a windmil , and promptly fel off the wal . Somehow he managed to propel himself into the garden rather than into the river. Most certainly Po, and most certainly not wel enough to be doing gymnastics in the back garden.

Bitterblue glanced at Madlen and Helda, who sat at the sitting room table murmuring over their morning cups. If Po had escaped from the infirmary again, she didn't want to give him away. "I feel like a bit of air before I go to my office," she said. "If Rood or Darby come for me, tell them to stuff themselves."

A grand production followed this announcement. The choosing and placement of a scarf, the positioning of her sword, the draping of a cloak over her bound arm. Final y, feeling like a moving coatrack, Bitterblue left them. Helda had altered her skirts so that they made wide, flowing trouser legs like Fox's, and found time yesterday, somehow, to fit the left sleeve of this particular gown with buttons. It seemed that Bitterblue had only to mention a species of attire she liked, and Helda would hand it to her a few days later.

Except, of course, the crown.

IN THE GARDEN, the sculpture of the woman turning into a mountain lion stood stark, screaming. Patches of fog hugged her and drifted away. How did Bellamew make her eyes so alive? Then recognition settled into Bitterblue. She registered the shape of the face, the eyes ful of determination and pain. This figure was her mother.