Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(7)
Author: Kristin Cashore

"Yes, please." Bitterblue liked reviewing the kingdom's census results with Thiel. The gathering of the information fel under Runnemood's jurisdiction, but Darby prepared the reports, which were organized neatly by district, with maps, showing statistics for literacy, employment, population numbers, lots of things. Thiel was good at answering her many questions; Thiel knew everything. And the entire endeavor was the closest Bitterblue ever came to feeling that she had a grasp on her kingdom.

THAT NIGHT AND the two nights following, she went out again, visiting the two pubs she knew, listening to stories. Often, the stories were about Leck. Leck torturing the little cut-up pets he'd kept in the back garden. Leck's castle servants walking around with cuts in their skin.

Leck's death at the end of Katsa's dagger. These late-night story audiences had gory tastes. But it was more than that; in the spaces between the blood, Bitterblue noticed another kind of recurring, bloodless story. This kind always began in the usual way of stories—perhaps two people fall ing in love, or a clever child trying to solve a mystery. But just as you thought you knew where the story was going, it would end abruptly, when the lovers or the child vanished with no explanation, never to be seen again.

Aborted stories. Why did people come out to hear them? Why would they choose to listen to the same thing over and over, crashing up against the same unanswerable question every time?

What had happened to all the people Leck had made disappear? How had their stories ended? There had been hundreds of them, children and adults, women and men, taken by Leck, presumably kill ed. But she didn't know, and her advisers had never been able to tell her, where, why, or how, and it seemed as if the people in the city had no idea either. Suddenly, it wasn't enough for Bitterblue to know they were gone. She wanted to know the rest about them, because the people in these story places were her people, and it was clear that they wanted to know. She wanted to know so that she could tell them.

There were other questions pushing themselves forward too. Now that it occurred to her to look, Bitterblue noticed places where three more gargoyles, in addition to the one she'd seen carried away, were missing from the east wal .

Why hadn't any of her advisers brought these thefts of property to her attention?

"Lady Queen," Thiel said severely in her office one morning, "don't sign that."

Bitterblue blinked. "What?"

"That charter, Lady Queen," said Thiel. "I've just spent fifteen minutes explaining why you shouldn't sign it, and there you are with a pen in your hand. Where is your mind?"

"Oh," Bitterblue said, dropping her pen, sighing. "No, I heard you. The lord Danhole—"

"Danzhol," corrected Thiel.

"Lord Danzhol, the lord of a town in central Monsea, objects to the town being taken from his governance. You think I should grant him an audience before deciding."

"I regret that it is his right to be heard, Lady Queen. I regret as wel —"

"Yes," said Bitterblue in distraction. "You've told me he also wishes to marry me. Very wel ."

"Lady Queen!" said Thiel, then tucked his chin to his chest, studying her. "Lady Queen," he said gently, "I ask a second time. Where is your mind today?"

"It's with the gargoyles, Thiel," said Bitterblue, rubbing her temples.

"Gargoyles? What can you mean, Lady Queen?"

"The ones on the east wal , Thiel. I overheard some chatter among the clerks in the lower offices," she lied, "about there being four gargoyles missing from the east wal . Why has no one informed me?"

"Missing!" said Thiel. "Where have they gone, Lady Queen?"

"Wel , how should I know? Where do gargoyles go?"

"I highly doubt this is true, Lady Queen," said Thiel. "I feel certain you misheard something."

"Go ask them," said Bitterblue. "Or have someone go check. I know what I heard."

Thiel went away. He came back sometime later with Darby, who carried a short stack of papers through which he was madly shuffling. "There are four gargoyles missing from the east wal , Lady Queen," Darby said briskly, reading, "according to our records of castle decoration. But they are missing merely in the sense that they were never there in the first place."

"Never there!" said Bitterblue, knowing perfectly wel that at least one had been there mere nights ago. "None of the four were ever there?"

"King Leck never got around to commissioning those four, Lady Queen. He left the spaces blank."

What Bitterblue had seen, when she'd counted, had been rough, broken places on the wal where it very much looked as if something stone had been present and then been hacked away—namely, gargoyles. "You're certain of those records?" she said. "When were they made?"

"At the start of your reign, Lady Queen," said Darby.

"Records were made of the state of every part of the castle; I supervised them myself, at the request of your uncle, King Ror."

It seemed a strange little thing to lie about, and not important enough for it to matter if Darby had gotten the records wrong. And yet, it unsettled her. Darby's eyes as he blinked at her, yell ow and green, efficient and certain as he gave her incorrect information, unsettled her. She found herself tracing her mind back through all the recent things Darby had told her, wondering if he was the type to lie.

Then she caught herself, knowing that she was suspicious only because she was general y unsettled, and that she was unsettled because everything these days seemed designed to disorient her. It was like the maze she'd discovered last night, looking for a new, more isolated route from her high rooms at the castle's farthest north edge to the gatehouse in the castle's south wal . The glass ceilings of the castle's top level corridors made her nervous about being seen by guards patrol ing above. So she'd dropped straight down a narrow staircase near her rooms to the level below, then found herself trapped in a series of passageways that always seemed promisingly straight and wel lit but then veered or branched, or even came to dark dead ends, until she was hopelessly confused.

"Are you lost?" an unfamiliar voice had asked behind her, male and sudden. Bitterblue had frozen, turned, and tried not to look too hard at the man who was gray-haired and dressed in the black of the Monsean Guard. "You're lost, aren't you?"

Not breathing, Bitterblue had nodded.

"So is everyone I find here," the man said, "mostly. You're in King Leck's maze. It's all corridors leading nowhere, with his rooms in the middle."

The guard had led her out. following on tiptoe, she'd wondered why Leck had built a maze around his rooms, and why she'd never known about it before. And began to wonder too about the other strange landscapes within her castle wal s. To get to the grand foyer and the gatehouse exit beyond, Bitterblue had to cross the great courtyard that sat flush against the foyer at the castle's far south. Leck had arranged for the shrubberies in the great courtyard to be cut into fantastical shapes: proud, posing people with flowers for eyes and hair; fierce, monstrous flowering animals.

Bears and mountain lions, enormous birds. A fountain in one corner poured noisy water into a deep pool. Balconies stretched up the courtyard wal s, all five stories. Gargoyles, more gargoyles, perched on high ledges, scaled wal s, leering, poking heads out shyly. The glass ceiling reflected the courtyard lanterns back at Bitterblue, like large muddy stars.

Why had Leck cared so much about his shrubberies? Why had he fitted glass ceilings to the courtyards and to so many of the castle's roofs? And what was it about the dark that made her question things she'd never questioned before, in the day?

In the great courtyard late one night, a man strode in from the grand foyer, pushing back his hood, crossing the floor with the sharp sound of boots on marble. Her adviser Runnemood's self-possessed walk; Runnemood's jeweled rings glittering and Runnemood's handsome features moving in and out of shadow. In a panic, Bitterblue had dived behind a shrubbery of a rearing horse. Then her Graced guard Holt had followed Runnemood in, supporting Judge Qual , who was shivering. all of them had passed into the castle, heading north. Bitterblue had run along, too frightened at almost having been seen to wonder, then, what they'd been doing out in the city at such an hour. It had occurred to her to wonder later.

"Where do you go at night, Runnemood?" she'd asked him the next morning.

"Go, Lady Queen?" he'd said with narrowed eyes.

"Yes," Bitterblue said, "do you ever go out late? I hear you do. Forgive me; I'm curious."

"I do have late meetings in the city now and then, Lady Queen," he said. "Late dinners with lords who want things —like appointments to one of your ministries, or your hand in marriage, for example. It is my job to humor such people and put them off."

Until midnight, with Judge Quall and Holt? "Do you take a guard?"

"Sometimes," Runnemood said, pushing himself up from his seat in the window and coming to stand before her. His fine, dark eyes flashed with curiosity. "Lady Queen, why are you asking these questions?"

She was asking because she couldn't ask the questions she wanted to ask. Are you telling me the truth? Why do I feel that you're not? Do you ever go to the east city? Do you ever hear the stories? Can you explain to me all the things I see at night that I don't understand?

"Because I wish you would take a guard," Bitterblue lied, "if you must be out so late. I worry for your safety."

Runnemood's smile flashed, broad and white. "What a dear, kind queen you are," he said, in a patronizing manner that made it difficult for her to keep the dear, kind that made it difficult for her to keep the dear, kind expression on her face. "I will take a guard if it eases your mind."

She went out on her own again for a few more nights, unremarked by her own Lienid Door Guard, who barely looked at her, caring only for her ring and her password.

And then, on the seventh night since she'd seen them stealing the gargoyle, she crossed paths again with Teddy and his Graceling Lienid friend.

She'd just discovered a third story place, near the silver docks, in the cel ar of an old, leaning warehouse. Tucked into a back corner with her drink, she was alarmed to find Saf bearing down upon her. He eyed her blandly, as if he'd never seen her before. Then he stood beside her, turning his attention to the man on the bar.

The man was tell ing a story that Bitterblue had never heard and was too anxious to attend to now, so distressing was it to have been singled out by Saf. The hero of the story was a sailor from the island kingdom of Lienid. Saf seemed quite riveted. Watching him while trying to appear not to, noticing how his eyes lit up with appreciation, Bitterblue made a connection that had eluded her before. She'd been on an ocean vessel once; she and Katsa had fled to Lienid to escape Leck. And she'd seen Saf climb the east wal ; she'd noted his sun-darkened skin and bleached hair.