Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(75)
Author: Kristin Cashore

"Midya is a famous naval explorer, Bitterblue," said Katsa.

"Does that make her Pikkian or Del ian?"

"Midya has a Del ian mother, and her father was Pikkian,"

said Katsa. "Technical y, she's Del ian, because that's where she was born. I'm told there's a great deal of intermingling, especial y in recent decades."

Intermingling. Bitterblue looked around the table, at these people who'd come together in her library alcove.

Monseans, Middluners, Lienid, Del ians, Pikkians.

Gracelings . . . and whatever Lady Fire was.

"Lady Fire is what is cal ed a 'monster,'" said Katsa quietly.

"Monster," Bitterblue said. "Ozhaleegh."

Every Del ian speaker at the table looked up and stared.

"Excuse me," Bitterblue said, standing, walking away from the table. Pushing herself a good distance away. She found a dark place behind some bookshelves and sat on the rug in a corner.

She knew what would happen. Po would come to her, or send to her whoever he felt was the right person. But it wouldn't help, because no one was right. No one living, anyway. She didn't want to cry on anyone's living shoulder or be told bracing things. She wanted to be out of this world, in a meadow of wildflowers, or a forest of white trees, not knowing about the terrible things happening around her, a baker girl, with a mother who did needlework.

Could she have that one back again? Could she have it for real?

The person who came was Lady Fire. Bitterblue was surprised that Po had sent her. Until, looking at the lady, she wondered if perhaps she had been cal ing for Lady Fire herself.

Fire knelt before Bitterblue. Bitterblue was suddenly frightened, terrified of this beautiful, old, creaky-kneed woman in brown; terrified of the impossible hair that tumbled around her shoulders; terrified of how much she wanted to look into this woman's face and see her own mother. Knowing, suddenly, that this was why Fire had mesmerized Bitterblue from that first moment: Because the love she felt when she looked into Fire's face was the love she had known once for her mother. And this wasn't right.

Her mother had deserved that love and her mother had suffered and fought and died because of it. This woman had done nothing but walk into a courtyard.

"You have drugged me with false feeling for you," Bitterblue whispered. "That is your power."

A voice came to her, inside her head. It was not words, but she understood it perfectly.

Your feelings are real, it said. But they're not for me.

"I feel them for you!"

Look closer, Bitterblue. You love fiercely, and you carry a queen's share of sadness. When I'm near, my presence overwhelms you with all that you feel—but I'm only the music, Bitterblue, or the hanging or the sculpture. I make your feelings swell, but it's not me you feel them for.

Bitterblue began to cry again. Fire offered her own furry, brown sleeve to wipe Bitterblue's tears. Gathering the softness to her face, all owing herself to sink into it, Bitterblue was connected, for a moment, to this singular creature who had come when she'd cal ed, and been kind when she'd made herself unpleasant. "If you wanted to,"

Bitterblue whispered, "you could go into my mind and see all that's in there. And steal it, and change it to whatever you like. Couldn't you?"

Yes, said Fire. Though it would not be easy with you, for you're strong. You don't know it, but your unfriendly reception quite endeared you to us, Bitterblue. We hoped you would be strong.

"You say you don't want to take our minds. Mine or my people's."

It's not why I'm here, said Fire.

"Would you do something for me if I asked you to?"

That depends on what it is.

"My mother said I was strong enough," Bitterblue said, beginning to shiver. "I was ten years old, and Leck was chasing us, and she knelt before me in a field of snow and gave me a knife and said that I was strong enough to survive what was coming. She said I had the heart and the mind of a queen." Bitterblue turned her face away from Fire, just for a moment, because this was hard; saying this truth aloud was hard. "I want to have the heart and mind of a queen," she whispered. "I want it more than anything. But I'm only pretending. I can't find the feeling of it inside me."

Fire considered her quietly. Y ou want me to look for it inside you.

"I just want to know," Bitterblue said. "If it's there, it would be a great comfort for me to know."

Fire said, I can tell you already that it's there.

"Real y?" Bitterblue whispered.

Queen Bitterblue, F ire said, shall I share with you the feeling of your own strength?

FIRE TOOK HER mind so that it was as if she were in her own bedroom, raw with crying and grief.

"This doesn't feel strong," Bitterblue said.

Wait, said Fire, still kneeling beside her in the library. B e patient.

She was in her bedroom, raw with crying and grief. She was frightened, and certain that she was incapable of the task ahead. She was ashamed of her mistakes. She was small , and tired of being left. Furious with the people who left, and left, and left. Heartsore on account of a man on a bridge who betrayed her and then left, and a boy on a bridge who she knew somehow would be the next one to leave her.

Then something began to change in the room. None of the feelings changed, but Bitterblue encompassed them somehow. She was larger than the feelings, she held the feelings in an embrace, and murmured kindnesses to them and comforted them. She was the room. The room was alive, the gold of the wal s glowed with life, the scarlet and gold stars of the ceiling were real. She was bigger than the room; she was the corridor and the sitting room and Helda's rooms. Helda was there, tired and worried and feeling some arthritis in her knitting hands, and Bitterblue embraced her, Bitterblue comforted her too, and eased the pain in her hands. And grew. She was the outer corridors, where she embraced her Lienid Door Guard. She was the offices and the tower and she embraced all the men who were broken and frightened and alone. She was the lower levels and the small er courtyards, the High Court, the library, where so many of her friends were now; where people gathered from an entire other land. The most amazing thing, to discover a new land! And its people were in the library now, and Bitterblue was large enough to contain such a degree of wonder. And to embrace her friends among them, feel the complications of their feelings for each other, Katsa and Po, Katsa and Giddon, Raffin and Bann, Giddon and Po. The complications of her own feelings. She was the great courtyard, where water pounded and snow fel on glass. She was the art gal ery, where Hava hid and where Bel amew's work stood as evidence of something that had transcended her father's cruelty. She was the kitchen, humming along with unending efficiency, and the stables where the winter sun burnished wood and horses whickered with hair in their eyes, and the practice rooms where men sweated, and the armory, and the smithy, the artisan courtyard where people were working, and she held all those people in her arms. She was the grounds, the wal s, and the bridges, where Sapphire hid, and where Thiel had broken her heart.

She saw herself, tiny, fall en, crying and broken on the bridge. She could feel every person in the castle, every person in the city. She could hold every one of them in her arms; comfort every one. She was enormous, and electric with feeling, and wise. She reached down to the tiny person on the bridge and embraced that girl's broken heart.

PART FIVE

The Ministry of Stories and Truth

(Late December and January)

Chapter 43

IT WAS SOOTHING, when so little else in the world lent itself to clarity, to make lists of tasks that needed execution, then choose a person to entrust with each task. It was comforting to meet the person and understand, final y, why Helda or Teddy or Giddon had recommended the person. And heartening to discuss the task with that person, then leave the meeting feeling as if the execution of the task was perhaps not one of the five most hopeless undertakings on earth. She knew they couldn't all be, for there were wel more than five tasks.

Hava had surprised Bitterblue with a few truly pertinent staff recommendations. The new Master of Prisons, for example, was a woman Hava had witnessed working on the silver docks, a Monsean Graceling named Goldie who'd grown up on a Lienid ship and eventual y become the commander of the navy prison in Ror City. Upon returning to Monsea after Leck's death, she'd discovered that the Monsean Guard didn't employ women, at all , for anything, and certainly not to command its prisons. Goldie was Graced, of all things, with singing.

"My new prison master is a songbird," Bitterblue muttered to herself at her desk. "It's absurd." But it was no less absurd than women not being employed by the Monsean Guard. She could accept the one to change the other. And it was an exciting change. The Del ians advised her on the matter, for they'd had women in their army for decades.

"I feel just a tad better about the Estil business now that you've made an all y in the Del ians, Bitterblue," said Po, lying on his back on Bitterblue's sofa. "At least about the danger of war. They're a serious military power. they'll back you if there's trouble."

"Does this mean you've let go of the certainty that I'm about to be attacked at every moment?"

"No," he said. "The existence of the Council endangers you."

"I'm a queen, Po," Bitterblue retorted. "I'll never be safe.

Also, when it comes to war, the Del ians don't want to get involved."

"The Del ians were pretending not to exist. Now they're behaving like neighbors. And you've charmed their mind reader, which is never easily done."

"It can't be that hard, if Katsa charmed you."

"You don't find me charming?" Katsa asked her from the sitting room floor, where she sat idly with her back to the sofa. "Move over," she said to Po, shoving his legs.

"Hel o," he said. "Would it kill you to ask nicely?"

"I've been asking you nicely for at least ten seconds and you've been ignoring me. Move over. I want to sit down."

Po made a show of beginning to move out of the way, then flipped himself off the sofa and flattened her. "So predictable," Bitterblue muttered as the two of them began wrestling on the rug.

"Fire is the sister-in-law of the king and the stepmother of the woman who commands the Del ian Army, Bitterblue,"

yel ed Po, his face jammed into the carpet. "She's a valuable friend!"

"I'm right here," Bitterblue said. "You don't need to yell ."

"I'm yell ing because I'm in pain!" he yell ed, his head under the sofa.

"I'm having a hard time with this letter," said Bitterblue vaguely. "What do you write to the elderly king of a foreign land when your kingdom is in shambles and you've only just discovered that he exists?"

"Tel him you hope to visit!" yell ed Po, who seemed somehow to have gotten the upper hand. He was now straddling Katsa, trying to pin her shoulders to the ground.