Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(6)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Later, after Fox had gone and Helda had retired to bed, Bitterblue unearthed her trousers and Fox's hood from the floor of the dressing room. Bitterblue wore a knife in her boot during the day and slept with knives in sheathes on each arm at night. It was what Katsa had taught her to do.

That night, Bitterblue strapped on all three knives, as security against the unpredictable.

Just before leaving, she rummaged through Ashen's chest, where she kept not only Ashen's jewelry but some of her own. She had so many useless things—pretty, she supposed, but it wasn't in her nature to wear jewelry.

Finding a plain gold choker that her uncle had sent from Lienid, she tucked it into the shirt inside her hood. There were such things as pawnshops under the bridges. She'd noticed them last night, and one or two had been open.

"I ONLY WORK with people I kno w," said the man at the first pawnshop.

At the second pawnshop, the woman behind the counter said exactly the same thing. still standing in the doorway, Bitterblue pull ed the choker out and held it up for her to see.

"Hm," the woman said. "Let me take a look at that."

Half a minute later, Bitterblue had traded the choker for an enormous pile of coins and a terse "Just don't tell me where you got it, boy." It was so many more coins than Bitterblue had reckoned for that her pockets sagged and jingled in the streets, until she thought to jam some of them into her boots. Not comfortable, but far less conspicuous.

She saw a street fight she didn't understand, nasty, abrupt, and bloody, for barely had two groups of men started pushing and shoving each other than knives came out flashing and thrusting. She ran on, ashamed but not wanting to see how it ended. Katsa and Po could have broken them up. Bitterblue should have, as the queen, but she wasn't the queen right now, and she would've been mad to try.

The story under Monster Bridge that night was told by a tiny woman with a huge voice who stood stock-stil on the bar, grasping her skirts in her hands. She wasn't Graced, but Bitterblue was mesmerized anyway, and nettled with the sense that she'd heard this story before. It was about a man who'd fall en into a boiling hot spring in the eastern mountains, then been rescued by an enormous golden fish.

It was a dramatic story involving a bizarrely colored animal, just like the tales Leck had told. Was that how she knew it? Had Leck told her it? Or had she read it in a book when she was little? If she'd read it in a book, was it a true story? If Leck had told it, was it false? How could anyone know, eight years later, what was which?

A man near the bar smashed his cup over the head of another man. In the time it took Bitterblue to register her surprise, a brawl had erupted. She watched in amazement as the entire room seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing. The tiny woman on the bar used her advantage of height to deliver a few admirable kicks.

At the edge of the brawl, where a civilized minority was trying to keep out of the way, someone knocked against someone brownhaired, who pitched his cider onto Bitterblue's front.

"Oh, ratbuggers. Look, lad, I'm awfully sorry," Brown Hair said, grabbing a dubious bit of towel from a table and using it to dab at Bitterblue, much to her alarm. She recognized him. He was the companion of the purple-eyed Graceling thief from the previous night, whom she now recognized as wel , beyond Brown Hair, launching himself cheerily into the melee.

"Your friend," Bitterblue said, pushing Brown Hair's hands away. "You should help your friend."

He came back at her determinedly with the towel. "I expect he's having a marvelous—time," he said, ending on a note of bewilderment as he uncovered a corner of braid under Bitterblue's hood. His eyes dropped to her chest, where, apparently, he found enough evidence to elucidate the situation.

"Great rivers," he said, snatching his hand back. He focused for the first time on her face, with no great success, for Bitterblue pull ed her hood even lower. "Forgive me, miss. Are you all right?"

"I'm perfectly fine. Let me pass."

The Graceling and the man trying to kill the Graceling bashed into Brown Hair from behind, wedging Brown Hair more firmly against Bitterblue. He was a pleasant-looking fel ow, with a lopsided face and nice hazel eyes. "Al ow my friend and me to escort you safely from this place, miss," he said.

"I don't need escort. I just need you to let me by."

"It's past midnight and you're small ."

"Too small for anyone to bother with."

"If only that were the way of things in Bitterblue City. Just give me a moment to col ect my rather overly enthusiastic friend," he said as he was buffeted again from behind, "and We'll see you get home. My name is Teddy. His is Saf, and he isn't really the blockhead he seems just now."

Teddy turned and waded heroical y into the fray, and Bitterblue scuttled along the room's perimeter, making her escape. Outside, knives gripped in both hands, she ran, cutting through a graveyard, slipping into an all eyway so narrow that her shoulders touched the sides.

Her mind tried to tick off streets and landmarks from the map she'd memorized, but it was difficult on true ground, rather than paper. Her vague direction was south. Slowing to a walk, she entered a street of buildings that seemed broken all to pieces and decided never again to put herself in a situation in which she had to run with so much change in her boots.

Some of these buildings looked as if they'd been cannibalized for their wood. A shape in a gutter that formulated itself into a corpse startled her, then scared her even more when it snored. A man who smel ed dead but apparently wasn't. A hen snoozed against his chest, his arm curled around it protectively.

When she came upon a whole new storytel ing place, she knew somehow what it was. It had the same setup as the other place, a door in an all ey, people passing in and out, and two tough-looking characters standing at the door with arms crossed.

Bitterblue's body decided for her. The watchdogs loomed but didn't stop her. Inside the door, steps led down into the earth, to another door that, when opened, dropped her into a room glowing with light, smel ing of cel ars and cider, and warm with the hypnotic voice of another storytel er.

Bitterblue bought a drink.

The story was, of all things, about Katsa. It was one of the horrible true stories from Katsa's childhood, when Katsa's uncle Randa, king of the seven kingdoms' most central kingdom, the Middluns, had used her for her fighting skil , forcing her to kill and maim his enemies on his behalf.

Bitterblue knew these stories; she'd heard them from Katsa herself. Parts of this storytel er's version were correct.

Katsa had hated having to kill for Randa. But other parts were exaggerated or untrue. The fights in this story were more sensational, more bloody than Katsa had ever all owed them to become, and Katsa was more melodramatic than Bitterblue could imagine her ever being.

Bitterblue wanted to yell at this storytel er for getting Katsa wrong, yell in Katsa's defense, and it confused her that the crowd seemed to love this wrong version of Katsa. To them, that Katsa was real.

AS BITTERBLUE APPROACHED the castle's eastern wal that night, she noticed a few things at once.

First, two of the lanterns atop the wal had gone out, leaving a section in such pitch darkness that Bitterblue glanced around the street, suspicious, and found that her suspicions were justified. The streetlamps along that stretch had also gone out. Next, she saw movement, nearly imperceptible, midway up the dark, flat wal . A moving shape—surely a person?—that still ed its movement as a member of the Monsean Guard marched past above. The movement started up again once the guard had gone.

Bitterblue realized that she was watching a person climb the east castle wal . She stepped into the seclusion of a shop doorway and tried to work out whether she should start shouting now, or wait until the perpetrator had made it to the top of the high wal , where he would be stuck, and the guards would be more likely to be able to catch him.

Except that the person didn't climb onto the wal . He stopped climbing just below the top—just below a small stone shadow that Bitterblue assumed, from its placement, was one of the many gargoyles that balanced on ledges or hung over the edge to stare at the ground below. A sort of scraping noise commenced that she couldn't identify, then stopped, momentarily, as the guard passed again above.

Then started up again. This went on for quite some time.

Bitterblue's mystification was turning to boredom when suddenly the person said, "Oof," a cracking noise followed, and the person slid, in a somewhat-control ed fall , down the wall again, with the gargoyle. A second person, whom Bitterblue hadn't noticed until this point, moved in the shadows at the base of the wal and caught the first person, more or less, though a grunt and a series of whispered curses suggested that one of them had gotten the worst of it. The second figure produced some sort of sack into which the first figure lowered the gargoyle, and then, sack over the shoulder of the first figure's back, they snuck away together.

They passed directly in front of Bitterblue, shrinking back against her doorway. She recognized them easily. They were the pleasant brown-haired fel ow, Teddy, and his Graceling friend, Saf.

Chapter 4

"LADY QUEEN," SAID Thiel sternly the next morning. "Are you even paying attention?"

She wasn't paying attention. She was trying to come up with a casual way to broach an unapproachable topic. How is everyone feeling today? Did you all sleep well? Anyone missing any gargoyles? "Of course I'm paying attention,"

she snapped.

"I daresay that if I asked you to describe the last five things you've signed, Lady Queen, you'd be at a loss."

What Thiel didn't understand was that this kind of work required no attention. "Three charters for three coastal towns," Bitterblue said, "a work order for a new door to be fitted to the vault of the royal treasury, and a letter to my uncle, the King of Lienid, requesting him to bring Prince Skye when he comes."

Thiel cleared his throat a bit sheepishly. "I stand corrected, Lady Queen. It was your unhesitant signing of that last that led me to wonder."

"Why should I hesitate? I like Skye."

"Do you?" said Thiel, then hesitated himself. "Real y?" he added, beginning to look so thoroughly pleased about things that Bitterblue began to regret goading him, for that was what she was doing.

"Thiel," she said. "Are your spies good for nothing? Skye favors men, not women, and certainly not me. Understand? The worst is that he's practical, so he might even marry me if we asked him. Maybe that would be fine with you, but it wouldn't with me."

"Oh," Thiel said with obvious disappointment. "That is a relevant piece of information, Lady Queen, if it's true. Are you certain?"

"Thiel," she said impatiently, "he's not secretive about it.

Ror himself has recently come to know. Haven't you wondered why Ror has never suggested the match?"

"Wel ," Thiel said, then resisted saying anything further. The threat of Bitterblue's cruelty if he persisted on the topic still lingered in this room. "Shal we review some census results today, Lady Queen?"