Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(76)
Author: Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue sighed. "Perhaps I should ask him for advice.

Katsa, you've met him. How did he seem?"

Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. "He was handsome," she said.

Po moaned. "Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?"

"I would not push a seventy-six-year-old man down a flight of stairs," said Katsa indignantly.

"I suppose I have that to look forward to, then," Po said.

"Someday."

"I've never pushed you down a flight of stairs," Katsa said, beginning to laugh.

"I'd like to see you try."

"Don't even joke. It's not funny."

"Oh, wildcat."

And now they were hugging. Bitterblue was left to rol her eyes and struggle alone with her letter to King Nash of the Del s.

"I've met a lot of kings, Bitterblue," said Katsa. "This one is a decent man, surrounded by decent people. They watched us quietly, for fifteen years, waiting to see if we could bumble ourselves into a more civilized state, rather than trying to conquer us. Po's right. You should tell him that you'd like to visit. And it would be entirely appropriate for you to ask him for advice. I have never been so happy," she added, sighing.

"Happy?"

"When I understood that the land I'd found was a land slow to war, with a king who was not an ass, and Pikkia another peaceful nation above them, I'd never been so happy. It changes the balance of the world."

ONE ADVANTAGE OF traveling by tunnel was that a tunnel made weather irrelevant. The Del ians could return in the winter, or wait until winter had passed—but, I miss my husband, F ire admitted to Bitterblue one day.

Bitterblue tried to imagine the kind of man who could be Fire's husband. "Is your husband like you?"

Fire smiled. He is old like me.

"What is his name?"

Brigan.

"And how long have you been married to him?"

Forty-eight years, said Fire.

They were tromping across the back garden, for Bitterblue had wanted to show Fire the Bel amew of her mother, fierce and strong, turning into a mountain lion. Now Bitterblue stopped, hugging herself, letting the snow soak into her boots.

What is it, my dear? asked Fire, stopping beside her.

"It's the first time I've ever heard of two people being together that long, and neither dying, and neither being awful," she said. "It makes me happy."

FIRE WAS MISSING two fingers, which had frightened Bitterblue the first time she'd noticed. Your father did not take them, Fire assured her; then asked her how much of a sad story she wanted to know.

This was how Bitterblue learned that forty-nine years ago, the Del s had been a kingdom with no certain shape, a kingdom recovering from a great evil. Like Monsea.

My father was a monster too, Fire told her.

"You mean, a monster like you?" asked Bitterblue.

He was a monster like me, said Fire, nodding, in the Dellian sense. He was a beautiful man with silver hair and a powerful mind. But he was a monster the way you normally use the word here as well. He was a terror, like your father. He used his power to destroy people. He destroyed our king and ruined our kingdom. That's why I came to you, Bitterblue.

"Because your father destroyed your kingdom?" Bitterblue said, confused.

Because when I heard about you, F ire said patiently, my heart burst open. I felt that I knew what you'd faced and what you're facing.

Bitterblue understood. Her voice was small . "You came just to comfort me?"

I'm not a young woman, Bitterblue, Fire said, smiling. I did not come for the exercise. Here, I'll tell you the story.

And Bitterblue hugged herself again, because the story of the Del s was, indeed, sad, but also because it gave her hope for what Monsea could be in forty-nine years. And what she could be too.

Fire said something else that gave Bitterblue hope. She taught Bitterblue a word: Eemkerr. Eemkerr had been Leck's first, true name.

Bitterblue took this information straight to the library.

"Death?" she said. "Do we have birth records for the seven kingdoms for the year Leck would have been born? will you review them for someone with a name that sounds like Eemkerr?"

"A name that sounds like Eemkerr," Death repeated, peering up at her from his new desk, which was covered with smel y, scorched papers.

"Lady Fire says that Leck told her that before his name was Leck, it was Eemkerr."

"Which is a name she remembers from almost fifty years ago," Death said sarcastical y, "spoken to her, not spel ed, presumably not a name from her own language, and conveyed to you mentally fifty years later. And I'm to recal every instance of a name of that nature in all the birth records available to me from the relevant year for all seven kingdoms, on the extremely slim chance that we have the name right and a record exists?"

"I know you're just as happy as I am," said Bitterblue.

Death's mouth twitched. Then he said, "Give me some time to remember, Lady Queen."

WHEN YOU VISIT us, Fire said, you will see the ways Leck tried to re-create the Dells here. I hope it doesn't distress you. Our kingdom is beautiful and I would hate for it to cause you pain.

They stood in Bitterblue's office, looking out at the bridges.

"I believe," Bitterblue said, giving it careful consideration, "that if your home reminds me of mine, I will like your home.

Leck was—what he was. But he did manage, somehow, to make this castle beautiful and strange, and I'd be sorry to change some things about it. He accidental y fil ed it with art that tells the truth," she said. "And I've even begun to appreciate the fol y of these bridges. They have little reason to exist, except as a monument to the truth of all that's happened, and because they're beautiful."

Bitterblue let Winged Bridge fil her sight, floating blue and white, like a winged thing. Monster Bridge, where her mother's body had burned. Winter Bridge, glimmering with mirrors that reflected the gray of the winter sky.

She said, "I suppose those are reasons to exist."

WE WILL LEAVE before too long, said Fire. Do I understand that you'll send a small party with us?

"Yes," Bitterblue said. "Helda is helping me assemble it. I don't know most of them, Fire. I'm sorry not to send people I know more personal y. My friends are absorbed with the Estil an situation and my own crisis here, and I fear that my clerks and guards are a bit too fragile right now for me to send with you." It was difficult to characterize the effect Fire had on Bitterblue's clerks and guards, or indeed, on any of her more empty-eyed people. She brought a deep peace to some, she made others frantic, and Bitterblue wasn't certain that one was any better than the other. Her people needed practice sitting comfortably in their own minds.

There's one who's asked to join us that I believe you know well, said Fire.

"Is there?"

A sailor. He wants to join us in our exploration of the eastern seas. I understand that he's been in some trouble with your law, Bitterblue?

Ah, said Bitterblue, taking a breath through a rush of sadness. Absorbing the inevitability of this news. You must mean Sapphire. Yes. Sapphire stole my crown.

Fire paused, considering Bitterblue as she stood, small and quiet, in the window. Why did he steal your crown? Because, Bitterblue whispered. He loved me and I hurt him.

After a moment, Fire said gently, He is welcome to join us.

Take care of him.

We will, of course.

He can give you good dreams, Bitterblue said.

Good dreams? The sleeping kind?

Yes, the sleeping kind. It's his Grace. He can make you dream the most marvelous, comforting things.

Well, F ire said. It's possible I've been waiting to meet your thief all my life.

Chapter 44

ON A JANUARY morning, the day before the Del ians' departure, Bitterblue was reading Death's latest report on the journal translation. Lady Queen, she read, I believe this journal I've been translating all along is from Leck's final year and is the last journal he ever wrote. In the section I just translated, he finally does kill Bellamew, as he has been threatening to do for some time.

Froggatt ushered someone into her office and Bitterblue didn't even look up, because in her peripheral vision, the visitor looked like Po. Then he chuckled.

Her eyes shot to him. "Skye!"

"You thought I was Po," said Po's gray-eyed brother, grinning.

Bitterblue jumped up and went to him. "I'm so happy to see you! Why didn't anyone tell me you'd landed? Where's your father?"

Skye wrapped her in a hug. "I decided to be the courier myself," he said. "You look wonderful, Cousin. Father's in Monport, with half the Lienid Navy."

"Oh, right," Bitterblue said. "I forgot."

One of Skye's eyebrows jumped up and his grin widened.

"You forgot that you asked my father to bring his navy?"

"No, no. There's just been—a lot going on. You've arrived in time to meet the Del ians before they go."

"The what?"

"The Del ians. They live in a kingdom to the east, under the mountains."

"Bitterblue," said Skye hesitantly, "are you in your right mind?"

Bitterblue took Skye's arm. "Let's go find Po, and I'll tell you about it."

IT WAS A pleasure to watch Po and Skye come together. Bitterblue couldn't explain why her heart swel ed to see brothers kiss and hug each other, but it made her feel as if the world wasn't hopeless. The meeting took place in Katsa's rooms, where Katsa, Po, and Giddon were doing some brainstorming about Estil . After the appropriate round of greetings and explanations, Po put an arm around Skye and took him into the adjacent room. Shut the door.

Katsa watched them go. Then, crossing her arms tight, she kicked an armchair.

After a bit more kicking of furniture, wal s, and floor had transpired, Giddon said to her, "Skye loves Po. This won't make him stop loving Po."

Katsa turned to Giddon with tears in her eyes. "He'l be so angry."

"He won't stay angry forever."

"Won't he?" she said. "People do sometimes."

"Do they?" he said. "Reasonable people? I hope that's not true."

Katsa gave him a funny look, but didn't answer. Resumed hugging herself and kicking things.

Bitterblue didn't want to go, but she had to; she had a meeting with Teddy in her tower. She was going to ask him if he mightn't like to work in her newly formed Ministry of Education, as an official representative adviser from the city. Part-time, of course. She wouldn't want to deprive him of the work he already loved.

* * * * * THE MONSEAN GUARD was in too much disarray at the moment to press Bitterblue on the matter of whether her crown was missing. And so Saf had been all owed to go home, although Bitterblue was still nervous about it. The crown was missing, it was at the bottom of the river, and there had been witnesses. It did not seem the time in the High Court just now, while they were trying to restore a kind of honesty, for Bitterblue to lie or try to falsify evidence of a crown she could not produce.