Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(5)
Author: Kristin Cashore

The Lienid, almost without exception, were a dark-haired, grayeyed people with a certain handsome set to their mouths and a certain sweep to their hair, like Skye, like Po, and gold in their ears and on their fingers, men and women, nobles and citizens alike. Bitterblue had inherited Ashen's dark hair and gray eyes and, though its effects were rather plainer on her than on others, something of the Lienid aspect. At any rate, she looked more Lienid than this fel ow did.

His hair was brown like wet sand, sun-bleached almost white at the ends, his skin deeply freckled. His facial features, though nice enough, were not particularly Lienid, but the gold studs that flashed in his ears and the rings on his fingers—those were unquestionably Lienid. His eyes were impossibly, abnormal y purple, so that one knew at once he wasn't just a plain person. And then, as one adjusted to his overal incongruity, one saw that of course the purple was of two different shades. He was a Graceling.

And a Lienid, but he had not been born Lienid.

Bitterblue wondered what his Grace was.

Then, as he slipped past a man who was swigging from a cup, Bitterblue saw him dip into the man's pocket, remove something, and tuck it under his arm, almost faster than Bitterblue could believe. Raising his eyes, accidental y catching hers, he saw that she saw. This time, there was no amusement in the expression he directed at her. Only coldness, some insolence, and the hint of a high- eyebrowed threat.

He turned his back to her and made his way to the door, where he placed a hand on the shoulder of a young man with floppy dark hair who was apparently his friend, for the two of them left together. Getting it into her head to see where they were going, she abandoned her cider and followed, but when she stepped out into the all ey, they were gone.

Not knowing the time, she returned to the castle, but paused at the foot of the drawbridge. She had stood in this very spot once, almost eight years ago. Her feet remembered and wanted to take her into the west city, the way she'd gone with her mother that night; her feet wanted to follow the river west until the city was far behind, cross the val eys to the plain before the forest. Bitterblue wanted to stand in the spot where Father had shot Mama in the back, shot her from his horse, in the snow, while Mama tried to run away. Bitterblue hadn't seen it. She'd been hiding in the forest, as Ashen had told her to do. But Po and Katsa had seen it. Sometimes Po described it for her, quietly, holding her hands. She'd imagined it so many times that it felt like a memory, but it wasn't. She hadn't been there, she hadn't screamed the way she imagined it. She hadn't jumped in front of the arrow, or knocked Mama out of the way, or thrown a knife and kill ed him in time.

A clock, striking two, brought Bitterblue back. There was nothing for her to the west except for a long and difficult walk, and memories that were sharp even from this distance. She pushed herself across the drawbridge.

In bed, exhausted, yawning, she couldn't understand, at first, why she wasn't fall ing asleep. Then she felt it, the streets thick with people, the shadows of buildings and bridges, the sound of the stories and the taste of cider; the fright that had pervaded all she'd done. Her body was thrumming with the life of the midnight city.

Chapter 3

REGULAR WORK IS ruined for me now.

This was Bitterblue's thought the next morning, bleary-eyed at her desk in her tower. Her adviser Darby, returned from his drunken bender that everyone knew about but no one mentioned, kept running up from the lower offices, bringing paper up the spiral staircase for her to do boring things with. With every arrival, he exploded through the door, catapulted across the room, and stopped on a pin before her desk. Every departure was the same. Darby, when he was sober, was always wide awake and ful of vim— always, for he had one yell ow eye and one green and was Graced with not needing sleep.

Runnemood, in the meantime, lazed around the room being handsome, while Thiel, too stiff and grim to be handsome, glided around Runnemood and loomed over the desk, deciding in which order Bitterblue should be tortured by the paper. Rood was still absent.

Bitterblue had too many questions, and there were too many people here whom she couldn't ask. Did her advisers know that there was a room under Monster Bridge where people told stories about Leck? Why weren't the neighborhoods under the bridges relevant to her yearly tours? Was it because the buildings were fall ing apart? That had been a surprise to her. And how could she get her hands on some coins without arousing suspicion? "I want a map," she said out loud.

"A map?" said Thiel, startled, then, rustling a sheaf of papers at her: "Of the location of this charter town?"

"No. A street map of Bitterblue City. I want to study a map.

Send someone to get one, will you, Thiel?"

"Does this have anything to do with watermelons, Lady Queen?"

"Thiel, I just want a map! Get me a map!"

"Gracious," said Thiel. "Darby," he said, turning to that brighteyed personage as he burst once more into the room.

"Send someone to the library for a street map of the city—a r ecent map—for the queen's perusal, would you?"

"A recent street map. Indeed," Darby said, spinning around and taking off again.

"We're procuring a map, Lady Queen," reported Thiel, turning back to Bitterblue.

"Yes," said Bitterblue sarcastical y, rubbing her head. "I was here when it happened, Thiel."

"Is everything all right, Lady Queen? You seem a bit— ruffled."

"She's tired," Runnemood announced, perched in a window with his arms crossed. "Her Majesty is tired of charters and judgments and reports. If she wishes a map, she Shall have one."

It annoyed Bitterblue that Runnemood understood. "I want to have more say in where I go on my tours from now on,"

she snapped.

"And so you Shall ," said Runnemood grandly. Honestly, she did not know how Thiel could stand him. Thiel was so plain and Runnemood so affected, yet the two of them worked together so comfortably, always capable of becoming a united front the moment Bitterblue stepped over the line of which only they knew the position. She decided to keep her mouth shut until the map arrived, to prevent herself from betraying the stratospheric heights of her irritability.

When it did arrive, it brought with it the royal librarian and a member of the Queen's Guard, Holt, for the librarian delivered so much more than she'd asked for that he couldn't carry it up the stairs without Holt's help. "Lady Queen," the librarian said. "As Your Majesty's request was disobligingly unspecific, I thought it best to deliver a range of maps, to increase the odds that one pleases you. It's my fervent wish to return to my work uninterrupted by your little people."

Bitterblue's librarian was Graced with the ability to read inhumanly fast and remember every word forever—or so he said, and certainly he seemed to have this skil . But Bitterblue wondered sometimes if he mightn't also be Graced with unpleasantness. His name was Death. It was pronounced to rhyme with "teeth," but Bitterblue liked to mispronounce it by accident on occasion.

"If that will be all , Lady Queen," said Death, dumping an armload of scrol s onto the edge of her desk, "I'll be going."

Half of the scrol s rol ed away and hit the floor with hol ow thuds. "Real y," said Thiel crossly, bending to col ect them, "I was quite clear to Darby that we wished a single, recent map. Take these away, Death. They're unnecessary."

"Al paper maps are recent," said Death with a sniff, "when one considers the vastness of geological time."

"Her Majesty merely wishes to see the city as it is today,"

said Thiel.

"A city is a living organism, always changing—"

"Her Majesty wishes—"

"I wish you would all go away," said Bitterblue desolately, more to herself than to anyone else. Both men continued arguing. Runnemood joined in. And then Holt, the Queen's Guard, placed his maps on the desk, neatly so they would not fall , tipped Thiel over one shoulder, tipped Death over the other, and stood under his load. In the astonished silence that followed, Holt lumbered toward Runnemood, who, understanding, let out a snort and stalked from the room of his own accord. Then Holt carried his outraged burdens away on either shoulder, just as they got their voices back. Bitterblue could hear them screaming their indignation all the way down the stairs.

Holt was a guard in his forties with lovely eyes of gray and silver. A large, broad man with a friendly, open face, he was Graced with strength.

"That was odd," Bitterblue mused aloud. But it was nice to be alone. Opening a scrol randomly, she saw that it was an astronomical map of the constel ations above the city.

Cursing Death, she pushed it aside. The next one was a map of the castle before Leck's renovations, when the courtyards had numbered four instead of seven, and the roofs of her tower, the courtyards, and the upper corridors had contained no glass. The next was, amazingly, a street map of the city, but a strange map with words obliterated here and there and no bridges at all . The fourth, final y, was a modern-day map, for the bridges were shown. Yes, it was quite clearly present-day, for it was titled "Bitterblue City,"

not "Leck City" or the name of any previous king.

Bitterblue shifted the stacks of paper on her desk so that they held down the corners of her map, spitefully pleased to find a use for them that didn't involve her having to read them. Then she settled in to study the map, determined, at least, to have a better sense of geography the next time she snuck out.

EVERYONE REALLY IS odd, she thought to herself later, after another encounter with Judge Qual .

She'd come upon him in the foyer outside the lower offices, balancing on one foot, then the other, scowling into the middle distance. "Femurs," he'd muttered, not noticing her.

"Clavicles. Vertebrae."

"For someone who doesn't like to talk about bones, Qual ,"

Bitterblue had said without prologue, "you bring them up an awful lot."

His eyes had passed over her, empty; then sharpening and momentarily confused. "Indeed, I do, Lady Queen," he'd said, seeming to pull himself together. "Forgive me.

Sometimes I get lost in thought and lose track of the moment."

Later, at dinner in her sitting room, Bitterblue asked Helda, "Do you notice any peculiar behavior at this court?"

"Peculiar behavior, Lady Queen?"

"Like, for example, today Holt picked up Thiel and Death and carried them out of my office on his shoulders because they were annoying me," said Bitterblue. "Isn't that a bit odd?"

"Very odd," declared Helda. "I'd like to see him try that with me. We've a couple of new gowns for you, Lady Queen.

Would you like to try them this evening?"

Bitterblue was indifferent to her gowns, but she always agreed to a fitting, for she found it soothing to be fussed over by Helda— Helda's soft, quick touches and her mutterings through a mouthful of pins. Her careful eyes and hands that considered Bitterblue's body and made the right decisions. Fox helped tonight too, holding fabric aside or smoothing it as Helda asked her to. It was centering to be touched. "I admire Fox's skirts that are divided into trousers," said Bitterblue to Helda. "Might I try some?"