Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(15)
Author: Kristin Cashore

"He did speak a lot of gibberish, Lady Queen," said Madlen, plucking her eye patch from its hook on her bedpost and tying it behind her head. "And when the other three returned, they had the look of young people quite pleased with themselves."

"Oh, right." Bitterblue had forgotten about the antics of the other three. "Were they carrying anything?"

"Indeed. A small sack that Bren brought upstairs before I could get a close look at it."

"Did it make any noise? A clinking? A jingle?"

"No noise, Lady Queen. She held it close and careful y."

"Could it have been silver coins?"

"Just as surely as it could have been flour, Lady Queen, or coal, or the jewels from the crowns of all six kings."

"Five kings," Bitterblue informed her. "Drowden is deposed. I found out this morning."

Madlen sat up straight and dropped her feet to the floor.

"Great floods," she said, staring at Bitterblue solemnly.

"This is a day for astonishment. When you tell me King Thigpen is deposed, I'll fall off my bed."

Thigpen was the King of Estil . Estil was the kingdom Madlen said she'd escaped from, though Madlen was rather close-mouthed about her past, and spoke with an accent that Bitterblue couldn't match to any part of the seven kingdoms she knew. Madlen had come to Bitterblue's court seeking employment seven years ago, all uding to the fact, during her interview, that in all the seven kingdoms but Lienid and Monsea, and particularly in Estil , Gracelings were enslaved to their kings, a circumstance she did not find acceptable. Bitterblue had had the tact not to ask Madlen if she had taken out her own eye to hide her Graceling identity during her escape. If she had—wel , Madlen's Grace was healing, so she'd probably known the best way to do it.

DINNER TOOK PLACE in her sitting room, early. A clock gently ticked and her crown caught the white light of a sun that wasn't even thinking about setting yet. I must stay awake, thought Bitterblue, so that I can go see Teddy.

Po joined her and Helda for dinner. Helda had once been Katsa's ladyservant in the Middluns, and had been a Council all y for some time now. She fussed over Po like he was a long-lost grandson.

I must not think about how I need to sneak out tonight without Po knowing. I can think about sneaking out. I must only avoid thinking about sneaking out without him knowing, for then he'll know immediately. O f course, the other side of Po's Grace was that he sensed the physicality of everyone and everything, so he would probably sense the departure of her body whether or not he knew her thoughts. Which he probably did by now, anyway, so determinedly had she been thinking about how she mustn't think about them.

And then, merciful y, Po got up to take his leave. Giddon appeared, ravenous, slapping Po on the shoulder, fall ing into Po's chair. Helda went off somewhere with a pair of spies who'd arrived. Bitterblue sat across from Giddon, nodding over her plate. I must ask him about Nander, she thought to herself. I must make polite conversation and I must not tell him my plans for sneaking out. He's nicelooking, isn't he? A beard quite suits him. "Puzzles,"

she said stupidly.

"What's that, Lady Queen?" he asked, putting his knife and fork down, looking into her face.

"Oh," she said, realizing she'd spoken aloud. "Nothing. I'm plagued by puzzles, is all . I'm sorry for the state I was in when we met earlier today, Giddon. It's not how I would have preferred to welcome you to Monsea."

"Lady Queen," he said with instant sympathy, "you mustn't apologize for that. I was in much the same state the first time I was involved in someone's death."

"Were you?" she said. "How old were you?"

"Fifteen."

"Forgive me, Giddon," she said, embarrassed to find herself fighting off a yawn. "I'm exhausted."

"You must rest."

"I must stay awake," she said—then apparently dozed off, for she woke sometime later in confusion, in her bed, to which Giddon had presumably helped her. He seemed to have taken her boots off, unbound her hair, and tucked her under the sheets. The memory came to her: her own voice saying, "I cannot sleep with all these pins in my hair." Lord Giddon's deep voice responding: He would go and get Helda. And Bitterblue, half asleep, saying forceful y, "No, it cannot wait," and yanking at her wound-up braids, and Giddon reaching to stop her, sitting beside her on her own bed and helping her, saying things to calm her. She leaning against him as he took down her hair, he murmuring with gentlemanly sympathy as she sighed against his chest, "I'm so tired. Oh, I haven't slept in ever so long."

Oh, she thought. How mortifying. And now her throat stung; her muscles ached, as if she'd been through one of Katsa's fighting lessons. I killed a man today, she thought, and with that thought, tears began to run down her face. She cried freely, hugging a pil ow, pressing her face into Ashen's embroidery.

After a while, her feelings solidified themselves around an odd little comfort. Mama had to kill a man once too. I've only done what she's done.

Paper crinkled in the pocket of her gown. Dashing tears away, Bitterblue pull ed out Teddy's strange words and held them tight in one fist. A small determination flared in her breast. She was a puzzle solver, and a truthseeker too. She didn't know what Teddy had meant by it, but she knew what she meant. Fumbling to light a lamp, finding pen and ink, she turned the paper to its back and wrote.

LIST OF PUZZLE PIECES Teddy's words. Who are my "first men"? What did he mean by cutting and stitching? Am I in danger? Whose prey am I?

Danzhol's words. What did he SEE? Was he complicit with Leck in some way? What was he trying to say?

Teddy and Saf 's actions. Why did they steal a gargoyle, and other things too? What does it mean to steal what's already been stolen?

Darby's records. Was he lying to me about the gargoyles never having been there?

General mysteries. Who attacked Teddy?

Things I've seen with my own eyes. Why is the east city falling apart but decorated anyway? Why was Leck so peculiar about decorating the castle?

What did Leck DO?

Here, she scribbled a few notes.

Tortured pets. Made people disappear. Cut. Burned printing shops. (Built bridges. Did castle renovations.) Honestly, how can I know how to rule my kingdom when I have no idea what happened in Leck's time? How can I understand what my people need? How can I find out more? In the story rooms? Should I ask my advisers again, even though they won't answer?

She added one more question, slowly and in small letters. What is Saf's Grace?

Then, returning to her larger list, she wrote:

Why is everybody insane? Danzhol. Holt. Judge Quall.

Ivan, the engineer who switched the gravestones and the watermelons. Darby. Rood. Although, she wondered, was it insane to drink too much from time to time, or to be susceptible to nerves? Bitterblue crossed out the word insane and replaced it with strange. Except that that opened the list to everybody. Everybody was strange. In a fit of frustration, she scratched out strange and wrote the word CRACKPOTS in big letters. Then she added Thiel and Runnemood, Saf, Teddy, Bren, Tilda, Death, and Po, just to be thorough.

PART TWO

Puzzles and Muddles

(September)

Chapter 8

SOME WONDERFUL PERSON had gotten every trace of Danzhol's blood out of the stone of her office floor. Even looking for it, Bitterblue couldn't find it.

She read the charter once more, careful y, letting each word sink in, and then she signed it. There was no point not to now.

"What will we do with his body?" she asked Thiel.

"It has been burned, Lady Queen," said Thiel.

"What? Already! Why was I not informed? I would have liked to go to the ceremony."

The door to the tower room opened. Death the librarian came in.

"I'm afraid the body couldn't wait for burning, Lady Queen,"

said Thiel. "It's only just September."

"And it was no different from any other burning ceremony, Lady Queen," added Runnemood from the window.

"That is not the point!" said Bitterblue. "I kill ed the man, for rot's sake. I should have been at the burning."

"It's not actual y Monsean tradition to burn the dead, you know, Lady Queen," Death put in. "It never has been."

"Nonsense," said Bitterblue, really quite upset. "We all perform fire ceremonies."

"I suppose it's not politic to contradict the queen," Death replied with such undisguised sarcasm that Bitterblue was surprised into looking at him hard. This man, nearing seventy, had the paper-thin skin of a man in his nineties.

His mismatched eyes were always dry and blinking, one green like seaweed, the other purplish like his pinched lips.

"Many people in Monsea do burn the dead, Lady Queen,"

he went on, "but it is not the Monsean way, as I'm sure your advisers know. It was King Leck's way. It's his tradition we honor when we burn our dead. Monseans before King Leck wrapped the body in a cloth infused with herbs and buried it in the ground at midnight. They've done so for as long as records have been kept. Those who know as much still do."

Bitterblue thought, suddenly, of the graveyard she ran through most nights, and of Ivan the engineer, who'd replaced watermelons with gravestones. What was the point of looking at things if she couldn't see them? "If this is true," she said, "then why have we not gone back to the Monsean ways?"

Her question was directed at Thiel, who stood before her looking patient and concerned. "I suppose we have not wanted to upset people unnecessarily, Lady Queen," he said.

"But why should it be upsetting?"

Runnemood answered. "There's no reason to disturb our mourners, Lady Queen. If people like the fire ceremonies, why should we stop them?"

"But, how is that forward-thinking?" said Bitterblue in confusion. "If we want to move away from Leck, why not teach people that it's the Monsean way to bury their dead?"

"It's a little thing, Lady Queen," said Runnemood. "It barely matters. Why remind people of their grief? Why give them reason to feel that perhaps they've been honoring their dead wrongly?"

It is not a little thing, thought Bitterblue. It has to do with tradition and respect, and with recovering what it means to be Monsean. "Was my mother's body burned or buried?"

The question seemed both to startle Thiel and bewilder him. He sat down hard in one of the chairs before her desk and did not answer.

"King Leck burned Queen Ashen's body," announced Death the librarian, "at the top of the high walkways on Monster Bridge at night, Lady Queen. It was how he preferred to perform such ceremonies. I believe he liked the grandness of the setting and the spectacle of the bridges lit up with fire."

"Was anyone there who actual y cared?" she asked.