Bitterblue (Graceling Realm #3)(9)
Author: Kristin Cashore

"And is it your mother who's Lienid, or your father?"

"My mother."

"And does she work with you?"

"She does fine needlework for the queen. Embroidery."

"Do you see much of her?"

"Not when we're working, but we live in the same rooms.

We see each other every night and morning."

Bitterblue stopped, suddenly needing to catch her breath. It seemed to her a beautiful daydream, one that could easily be true. Perhaps there was a baker girl in the castle with a mother who was alive, touching her, every day, with thoughts, seeing her every night. "My father was a traveling Monsean fabler," she continued. "One summer he went to Lienid to tell stories and fel in love with my mother. He brought her here to live. He was kill ed in an accident with a dagger."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Saf said.

"It was years ago," Bitterblue said breathlessly.

"And why does a baker girl sneak out at night to steal drink money? A bit dangerous, isn't it?"

She suspected that the question contained a reference to her size. "Have you ever seen Lady Katsa of the Middluns?" she asked archly.

"No, but everyone knows her story, of course."

"She's dangerous without being big as a man."

"Fair enough, but she's a Graced fighter."

"She's taught many of the girls in this city to fight. She taught me."

"You've met her, then," Saf said, clapping his cup down onto the ledge and turning to her, all bright-eyed attention.

"Have you met Prince Po too?"

"He's in the castle sometimes," Bitterblue said with a vague flap of her hand. "My point is, I'm able to defend myself."

"I'd pay to watch either of them fight," he said. "I'd give gold to watch them fight each other."

"Your own gold? Or someone else's? I think you're a Graced thief."

Saf seemed to enjoy this accusation immensely. "I'm not a Graced thief," he said, grinning. "Nor am I a Graced mind reader, but I know why you sneak out at nights. You can't get enough of the stories."

Yes. She couldn't get enough of the stories. Or of these exchanges with Teddy and Saf, for they were the same as the stories, the same as the midnight streets and all eys and graveyards, the smel of smoke and cider, the crumbling buildings. The monstrous bridges, reaching up into the sky, that Leck had built for no reason.

The more I see and hear, the more I realize how much I don't know.

I want to know everything.

Chapter 5

THE ATTACK IN the story room two nights later took her completely by surprise.

Even in the moments afterwards Bitterblue was unaware of it having happened, and wondered why Saf had pushed in front of her protectively, clutching at the arm of a hooded man, and why Teddy was leaning on Saf looking vague and il . The entire struggle was so silent and the movements so furiously control ed that when the hooded man final y broke away and Saf whispered to Bitterblue, "Give Teddy your shoulder. Act normal. He's only drunk," Bitterblue thought Teddy actual y was drunk. She didn't understand until they'd passed out of the story room, Teddy's weight heavy between them, that his problem was not drink. His problem was the knife in his gut.

If Bitterblue had had any doubt that Saf was a sailor, his language now as he carried his gasping, glass-eyed friend up the steps laid those doubts to rest. Saf lowered Teddy to the ground, whipped his own shirt over his head and ripped it in half. In one motion that caused Teddy—and Bitterblue —to cry out, he yanked the blade from Teddy's abdomen.

Then he pressed a wadded piece of shirt to the wound and snarled up at Bitterblue.

"Do you know the intersection of White Horse all ey and Bow Street?"

It was a location close to the castle, by the east wal . "Yes."

"A healer named Roke lives on the second story of the building on the southeast corner. Run and wake him and bring him to Teddy's shop."

"Where is Teddy's shop?"

"On Tinker Street near the fountain. Roke knows it."

"But that's very near here. Surely there's a healer closer—"

Teddy stirred and began to whimper. "Roke," he cried.

"Tilda— tell Tilda and Bren—"

Saf barked at Bitterblue, "Roke is the only healer we can trust. Stop wasting time. Go!"

Bitterblue turned and tore through the streets, hoping that Saf's Grace, whatever it was, was a kind to help him keep Teddy alive for the next thirty minutes, because that was how long this relay was going to take her. Her mind spun.

Why would a hooded man in a story room attack a writer and a thief of gargoyles and things already stolen? What had Teddy done for someone to want to hurt him this badly?

And then, after a few minutes of running, the question dropped away, her head cooled, and she began to realize the true desperation of the situation. Bitterblue knew about knife wounds. Katsa had taught her how to inflict them, and Katsa's cousin Prince Raffin, the heir to the Middluns throne and a medicine maker, had explained to her the limits of what healers could do. The knife in Teddy's gut had been low. Perhaps his lungs and his liver and maybe even his stomach were safe, but still , it had probably at least cut into his intestine. This could mean death even with a healer skil ed enough to patch the holes, for the contents of Teddy's intestine even now could be spil ing into his abdomen, and this would lead to an infection—fever, swel ing, pain—that people rarely survived. If it came to that. He could also bleed to death.

Bitterblue had never heard of the healer Roke, and was in no position to judge his abilities. But she did know of one healer who had kept alive people with knives in their bel ies: her own healer, Madlen, who was Graced, and who had a reputation for marvelous medicines and impossible surgical successes.

When Bitterblue reached the intersection of White Horse all ey and Bow Street, she kept running.

THE CASTLE INFIRMARY was on the ground floor, east of the great courtyard. Not knowing her way around, Bitterblue scurried like the shadow of a rat down a hal way and took a chance, thrusting Ashen's ring into the face of a member of the Monsean Guard who was drowsing under a wal lantern.

"Madlen!" she whispered. "Where?"

Startled, the man cleared his throat and gestured. "Down that corridor. Second door on the left."

A moment later she was in a dark bedroom shaking her healer out of sleep. Madlen woke, grunting strange, incomprehensible words that Bitterblue cut through sharply.

"Madlen, it's the queen. Wake up, and dress for running, and bring whatever you need for a man with a blade in his gut."

There was the noise of fumbling, then a spark as Madlen lit a candle. She exploded out of bed, glared at Bitterblue with her single amber eye, and blundered across the room to her wardrobe, where she yanked on a pair of trousers. The ends of her nightgown hanging to her knees, her face glowing as palely as the gown, she began to toss a great number of vials and packages and horrible-looking sharp metal implements into a bag. "What part of his gut?"

"Lowish, and rightish, I think. The blade long and wide."

"How old the man, how big, and how far are we going?"

"I don't know, nineteen, twenty, and he's no unusual size— neither tal nor short, neither fat nor thin. Near the silver docks. Is it bad, Madlen?"

"Yes," she said, "it's bad. Lead the way, Lady Queen. I'm ready."

She was, perhaps, not ready in the traditional court sense of the word. She hadn't bothered with the eye patch she Usually wore over her empty eye socket, and her white hair stood out in wild knots and snarls. But she'd shoved the bunchy ends of her nightgown into the waist of her trousers.

"You mustn't cal me Queen tonight," Bitterblue whispered as they raced along hal ways and through the shrubberies of the great courtyard. "I'm a baker in the castle kitchens and my name is Sparks."

Madlen made a disbelieving noise.

"Above all else," Bitterblue whispered, "you must never tell a single soul even the small est part of what happens tonight. I speak as your queen, Madlen. Do you understand?"

"I understand perfectly," Madlen said, "Sparks."

Bitterblue wanted to thank the seas for sending this ferocious, astonishing Graceling to her court. But it seemed too early in the night yet for thanks.

They ran to the silver docks.

ON TINKER STREET near the fountain Bitterblue stopped, breathing hard, turning in circles, looking for a place that was lit up, squinting at the pictures on the shop signs. She had just made out the words T eddren's and P rint above a dark doorway when the door opened and the gold in Saf's ears flashed at her.

His hands and forearms were covered in blood, his bare chest rising and fall ing, and as Bitterblue yanked Madlen forward, the panic on his face turned to fury. "That is not Roke," he said, finger extended toward Madlen's white mane, apparently the portion of her anatomy identifying her most readily as someone other than Roke.

"This is the Graced healer Madlen," Bitterblue said. "No doubt you've heard of her. She's the very best, Saf, the queen's most favored healer."

He seemed to be hyperventilating. "You brought one of the queen's own healers here?"

"I swear to you that she won't speak of anything she sees.

You have my word."

"Your word? Your word, when I don't even know your true name?"

Madlen, younger than her hair suggested and strong as any healer must be, shoved at Saf 's chest with both hands, pushing him bodily back into the shop. " My true name is Madlen," she said, "and I may be the only healer in all seven kingdoms who can save whoever you've got dying in there. And when this girl asks me to keep something quiet,"

she said, pointing a steady finger back at Bitterblue, "I do.

Now get out of my way, you daft, muscle-brained nitwit!"

She elbowed past him toward the light leaking from a partly open door in the back. Barging through it, she slammed the door shut behind her.

Saf reached beyond Bitterblue to pull the shop door closed, plunging them into darkness. "I'd love to know what the seas is going on in that castle of yours, Sparks," he said with bitterness, derision, accusation, and every other nasty feeling his voice could throw into it. "The queen's own healer jumping to the will of a baker girl? What kind of healer is she anyway? I don't like her accent."

Saf smel ed like blood and sweat: a sour, metal ic combination that was instantly familiar to her. Saf smel ed like fear. "How is he?" she whispered.

He didn't answer, only made a sound something like a disgusted sob. Then he grabbed her arm and yanked her across the room to the door with edges seeping light.