Bitterblue

1

QUEEN BITTERBLUE NEVER meant to tell so many people so many lies.

IT ALL BEGAN with the High Court case about the madman and the watermelons. The man in question, named Ivan, lived along the River Dell in an eastern section of the city near the merchant docks. To one side of his house resided a cutter and engraver of gravestones, and to the other side was a neighbor's watermelon patch. Ivan had contrived somehow in the dark of night to replace every watermelon in the watermelon patch with a gravestone, and every gravestone in the engraver's lot with a watermelon. He'd then shoved cryptic instructions under each neighbor's door with the intention of setting each on a scavenger hunt to find his missing items, a move useless in one case and unnecessary in the other, as the watermelon-grower could not read and the gravestone-carver could see her gravestones from her doorstep quite plainly, planted in the watermelon patch two lots down. Both had guessed the culprit immediately, for Ivan's antics were not uncommon. Only a month ago, Ivan had stolen a neighbor's cow and perched her atop yet another neighbor's candle shop, where she mooed mournfully until someone climbed the roof to milk her, and where she was compelled to live for several days, the kingdom's most elevated and probably most mystified cow, while the few literate neighbors on the street worked through Ivan's cryptic clues for how to build the rope and pulley device to bring her down. Ivan was an engineer by trade.

Ivan was, in fact, the engineer who'd designed, during Leck's reign, the three city bridges.

Sitting at the high table of the High Court, Bitterblue was a trifle annoyed with her advisers, whose job it was to decide what court cases were worth the queen's time. It seemed to her that they were always doing this, sending her to preside over the kingdom's silliest business, then whisking her back to her office the moment something juicy cropped up. "This seems like a straightforward nuisance complaint, doesn't it?" she said to the four men to her left and the four to her right, the eight judges who supported her when she was present at this table and handled the proceedings themselves when she was not. "If so, I'll leave it to you."

"Bones," said Judge Quall at her right elbow.

"What?"

Judge Quall glared at Bitterblue, then glared at the parties on the floor awaiting trial. "Anyone who mentions bones in the course of this trial will be fined," he said sternly. "I don't even want to hear mention of the word. Understood?"

"Lord Quall," said Bitterblue, scrutinizing him through narrowed eyes. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"In a recent divorce trial, Lady Queen," said Quall, "the defendant kept mumbling about bones for no reason, like a man off his head, and I will not sit through that again! It was distressing!"

"But you often judge murder trials. Surely you're accustomed to talk of bones."

"This is a trial about watermelons! Watermelons are invertebrate creatures!" cried Quall.

"Yes, all right," said Bitterblue, rubbing her face, trying to rub away her incredulous expression. "No talk of—"

Quall flinched.

Bones, finished Bitterblue in her own mind. Everyone is mad. "In addition to the findings of my associates," she said, standing to go, "the people on Ivan's street near the merchant docks who cannot read shall be taught to do so at the court's expense. Is that understood?"

Her words were met with a silence so profound that it startled her; her judges peered at her in alarm. She ran through her words again: The people shall be taught to read. Surely there was nothing so strange in that?

"It is in your power to make such a declaration," said Quall, "Lady Queen." He spoke with an implication in every syllable that she'd done something ridiculous. And why should he be so condescending? She knew perfectly well that it was within her power, just as she knew it was within her power to remove any judge she felt like removing from the service of this Court. The watermelongrower was also staring at her with an expression of sheerest confusion. Beyond him, a scattering of amused faces brought the heat crawling up Bitterblue's neck.

How typical of this Court for everyone else to act mad and then, when I've behaved in a perfectly reasonable manner, compel me to feel as if I were the mad one.

"See to it," she said to Quall, then turned to make her escape. As she passed through the exit at the back of the dais, she forced her small shoulders straight and proud, even though it was not what she felt.

IN HER ROUND tower office, the windows were open, the light was beginning to change to evening, and her advisers weren't happy.

"We don't have limitless resources, Lady Queen," said Thiel, steelhaired, steel-eyed, standing before her desk like a glacier. "A declaration like that, once you've made it public, is difficult to reverse."

"But, Thiel, why should we reverse it? Shouldn't it distress us to hear of a street in the east city where people can't read?"

"There will always be the occasional person in the city who can't read, Lady Queen. It's hardly a matter that requires the direct intervention of the crown. You've now created a precedent which intimates that the queen's court is available to educate any citizen who comes forward claiming to be illiterate!"

"My citizens should be able to come forward. My father saw that they were deprived of education for thirty-five years. Their illiteracy is the responsibility of the crown!"

"But we don't have the time or the means to address it on an individual basis, Lady Queen. You're not a schoolteacher; you're the Queen of Monsea. What the people need right now is for you to behave like it, so that they can feel that they're in good hands."

"Anyway," broke in her adviser Runnemood, who was sitting in one of the windows, "nearly everyone can read. And has it occurred to you, Lady Queen, that those who can't might not want to? The people on Ivan's street have businesses and families to feed. When do they have time for lessons?"

"How would I know?" Bitterblue exclaimed. "What do I know about the people and their businesses?"

Sometimes she felt lost behind this desk in the middle of the room, this desk that was so big for her smallness. She could hear every word they were being tactful enough not to say: that she'd made a fool of herself; that she'd proven the queen to be young, silly, and naïve about her station. It had seemed a powerful thing to say at the time. Were her instincts so terrible?

"It's all right, Bitterblue," said Thiel, more gently now. "We can move on from this."

There was kindness in the use of her name rather than her title. The glacier showing its willingness to recede. Bitterblue looked into the eyes of her top adviser and saw that he was worried, anxious that he'd harangued her too much. "I'll make no more declarations without consulting you first," she said quietly.

"There now," said Thiel, relieved. "See? That's a wise decision. Wisdom is queenly, Lady Queen."

FOR AN HOUR or so, Thiel kept her captive behind towers of paper. Runnemood, in contrast, circled along the windows, exclaiming at the pink light, bouncing on the balls of his feet, and distracting her with tales of consummately happy illiterate people. Finally, mercifully, he went away to some evening meeting with city lords. Runnemood was a pleasant man to look at and an adviser she needed, the one most adept at warding away ministers and lords who wished to talk Bitterblue's ear off with requests, complaints, and obesiances. But that was because he himself knew how to be pushy with words. His younger brother, Rood, was also one of Bitterblue's advisers. The two brothers, Thiel, and her secretary and fourth adviser, Darby, were all about sixty or so, though Runnemood didn't look it. The others did. All four had been advisers to Leck. "Were we short-staffed today?" Bitterblue asked Thiel. "I don't remember seeing Rood."

"Rood is resting today," said Thiel. "And Darby is unwell."

"Ah." Bitterblue understood the code: Rood was having one of his nervous episodes and Darby was drunk. She rested her forehead on the desk for a moment, afraid that otherwise she'd laugh. What would her uncle, who was the King of Lienid, think of the state of her advisers? King Ror had chosen these men as her team, judging them, on the basis of their previous experience, to be the men most knowledgeable about the kingdom's needs for recovery. Would their behavior today surprise him? Or were Ror's own advisers equally colorful? Perhaps this was the way in all seven kingdoms.

And perhaps it didn't matter. She had nothing to complain of when it came to her advisers' productivity, except perhaps that they were too productive. The paper that piled itself on her desk every day, every hour, was the evidence: taxes levied, court judgments rendered, prisons proposed, laws enacted, towns chartered; paper, paper, until her fingers smelled like paper and her eyes teared at the sight of paper and sometimes her head pounded.

"Watermelons," Bitterblue said into the surface of her desk.

"Lady Queen?" said Thiel.

Bitterblue rubbed at the heavy braids wound around her head, then sat up. "I never knew there were watermelon patches in the city, Thiel. On my next yearly tour, may I see one?"

"We intend your next tour to coincide with your uncle's visit this winter, Lady Queen. I'm no expert on watermelons, but I don't believe they're particularly impressive in January."

"Could I go out on a tour now?"

"Lady Queen, it is the very middle of August. When do you imagine we could make time for such a thing in August?"

The sky all around this tower was the color of watermelon flesh. The tall clock against the wall ticked the evening away, and above her, through the glass ceiling, the light darkened to purple. One star shone. "Oh, Thiel," Bitterblue said, sighing. "Go away, won't you?"

"I will, Lady Queen," said Thiel, "but first, I wish to discuss the matter of your marriage."

"No."

"You're eighteen, Lady Queen, with no heir. A number of the six kings have sons yet unmarried, including two of your own cousins—"

"Thiel, if you start listing princes again, I'll throw ink at you. If you so much as whisper the names of my cousins—"

"Lady Queen," Thiel said, talking over her, completely unperturbed, "as little as I wish to upset you, this is a reality that must be faced. You've developed a fine rapport with your cousin Skye in the course of his ambassadorial visits. When King Ror comes this winter, he'll probably bring Prince Skye with him. Between now and then, we'll have to have this discussion."

"We won't," Bitterblue said, clutching her pen hard. "There's nothing to discuss."

"We will," said Thiel firmly.

If she looked closely enough, Bitterblue could make out the lines of healed scars on Thiel's cheekbones. "There's something I'd like to discuss," she said. "Do you remember the time you came into my mother's rooms to say something to my father that made him angry and he brought you downstairs through the hidden door? What did he do to you down there?"

It was as if she'd blown out a candle. He stood before her, tall, gaunt, and confused. Then even the confusion faded and the light went out of his eyes. He smoothed his impeccable shirtfront, staring down at it, tugging, as if tidiness mattered greatly in this moment. Then he bowed once, quietly; turned; and walked out of the room.

LEFT ALONE, BITTERBLUE shuffled papers, signed things, sneezed at the dust—tried, and failed, to talk herself out of a small shame. She'd done it on purpose. She'd known full well that he wouldn't be able to bear her question. In fact, almost all of the men who worked in her offices, from her advisers to her ministers and clerks to her personal guard—those who had been Leck's men—flinched away from direct reminders of the time of Leck's reign—flinched away, or fell apart. It was the weapon she always used when one of them pushed her too far, for it was the only weapon she had that worked. She suspected that there'd be no more marriage talk for a while.

Her advisers had a single-mindedness that left her behind sometimes. That was why the marriage talk frightened her: Things that started as mere talk among them seemed to become real institutions, suddenly, forcefully, before she'd ever managed to comprehend them or form an opinion. It had happened with the law that gave blanket pardons for all crimes committed during Leck's reign. It had happened with the charter provision that allowed towns to break free of their governing lords and rule themselves. It had happened with the suggestion—just a suggestion!—to block off Leck's old living chambers, take down his animal cages in the back garden, and burn his belongings.

And it wasn't that she was necessarily opposed to any of these measures, or regretted her approval once things settled down enough for her to comprehend that she'd approved. It was only that she didn't know what she thought, she needed more time than they did, she couldn't always be rushing ahead the way they were, and it frustrated her to look back and realize that she'd let herself be pushed into something. "It's deliberate, Lady Queen," they'd told her, "a deliberate philosophy of forward-thinkingness. You're right to encourage it."

"But—"

"Lady Queen," Thiel had said gently, "we're trying to lift people out of Leck's spell and help them move on, you understand? Otherwise, people will wallow in their own upsetting stories. Have you spoken to your uncle about it?"

Yes, she had. Bitterblue's uncle, after Leck's death, had come halfway across the world for his niece. King Ror had created Monsea's new statutes, formed its ministries and courts, chosen its administrators, then passed the kingdom into Bitterblue's ten-year-old hands. He'd seen to the burning of Leck's body and mourned the murder of his own sister, Bitterblue's mother, who was gone. Ror had brought order out of chaos in Monsea. "Leck is still lodged in too many people's minds," he had said to her. "His Grace is a sickness that lingers, a nightmare you must help people to forget."

But how was forgetting possible? Could she forget her own father? Could she forget that her father had murdered her mother? How could she forget the rape of her own mind?

Bitterblue laid her pen down and went, cautiously, to an eastfacing window. She put a hand to the frame to steady herself and rested her temple against the glass, closing her eyes until the falling sensation receded. At the base of her tower, the River Dell formed the city's northern boundary. Opening her eyes, she followed the river's south bank east, past the three bridges, past where she guessed the silver docks and lumber docks, fish and merchant docks to be. "Watermelon patch," she said, sighing. Of course, it was too far and too dark to see any such thing.

The River Dell here, as it lapped at the castle's north walls, was slow-moving and wide as a bay. The boggy ground on the opposite shore was undeveloped, untraveled except by those who lived in Monsea's far north, but still, for some unaccountable reason, her father had built the three bridges, each higher and more magnificent than any bridge needed to be. Winged Bridge, the closest, had a floor of white and blue marble, like clouds. Monster Bridge, the highest, had a walkway that rose as high as its highest arch. Winter Bridge, made of mirrors, was eerily hard to distinguish from the sky during the day, and sparkled with the light of the stars, the water, the city at night. They were purple and crimson shapes now in the sunset, the bridges, unreal and almost animal. Huge, slender creatures that stretched north across flashing water to useless land.

The falling sensation crept up on her again. Her father had told her a story of another sparkling city, also with bridges and a river—a rushing river whose water leapt off a cliff, plummeted through the air, and plunged into the sea far below. Bitterblue had laughed in delight to hear of that flying river. She had been five or six. She'd been sitting in his lap.

Leck, who tortured animals. Leck, who made little girls and hundreds of other people disappear. Leck, who became obsessed with me and chased me across the world.

Why do I push myself to these windows when I know I'll be too dizzy to get a good look at anything? What is it that I'm trying to see?

SHE ENTERED THE foyer of her rooms that night, turned right to her sitting room, and found Helda knitting on the sofa. The servant girl Fox was washing the windows.

Helda, who was Bitterblue's housekeeper, ladyservant, and spymaster, reached a hand into a pocket and passed Bitterblue two letters. "Here you are, dear. I'll ring for dinner," she said, heaving herself up, patting her white hair, and leaving the room.

"Oh!" Bitterblue flushed with pleasure. "Two letters." She broke open the plain seals and peeked inside. Both were ciphered and both written in hands she knew instantly, the messy scrawl belonging to Lady Katsa of the Middluns, the careful, strong markings belonging to Prince Po of Lienid, who was Skye's younger brother, and, with Skye, one of the two unmarried sons of Ror who would make Bitterblue dreadful husbands. Truly, comically dreadful.

She found a corner of the sofa to curl up in and read Po's first. Po had lost his sight eight years ago. He could not read words on paper, for while the part of his Grace that allowed him to sense the physical world around him compensated for many aspects of his blindness, he had trouble demystifying differences on flat surfaces, and he could not sense color. He wrote in large letters with a sharp piece of graphite, because graphite was easier to control than ink, and he wrote with a ruler as a guide, since he could not see what he was writing. He also used a small set of movable wooden letters as a reference to help him keep his own ciphers straight in his mind.

Just now, his letter said, he was in the northern kingdom of Nander, stirring up trouble. Switching letters, Bitterblue read that Katsa, who was an unparalleled fighter and Graced with survival skills, had been dividing her time among the kingdoms of Estill, Sunder, and Wester, where she was also stirring up trouble. That was what they did with themselves, those two Gracelings, along with a small band of friends: They stirred up trouble on a serious scale—bribery, coercion, sabotage, organized rebellion—all directed at stopping the worst behavior of the world's most seriously corrupt kings. "King Drowden of Nander has been imprisoning his nobles randomly and executing them, because he knows some are disloyal, but isn't sure which," wrote Po. "We're going to spring them from prison. Giddon and I have been teaching townspeople to fight. There's going to be a revolution, Cousin."

Both letters ended the same way. Po and Katsa hadn't seen each other in months, and neither of them had seen Bitterblue in over a year. Both intended to come to Bitterblue as soon as their work could spare them, and stay as long as they could.

Bitterblue was so happy that she curled herself up in a ball on the sofa and hugged a pillow for a full minute.

At the far end of the room, Fox had managed to climb to the very top of the tall windows, bracing her hands and feet against the window frames. There, she rubbed at her own reflection vigorously, polishing the surface to a high shine. Wearing a divided skirt of blue, Fox matched her surroundings, for Bitterblue's sitting room was blue, from the carpet to the blue-and-gold walls to the ceiling, which was midnight blue and stenciled with gold and scarlet stars. The royal crown sat on a blue velvet cushion in this room, always, except when Bitterblue wore it. A hanging of a fantastical sky-blue horse with green eyes marked the hidden door that had once given passage down to Leck's rooms below, before people had come in and done something to block off the stairway.

Fox was a Graceling, with one eye pale gray and the other dark gray, and she was startlingly pretty, almost glamorous, red-haired and strong-featured. Her Grace was a strange one: fearlessness. But it was not fearlessness combined with recklessness; it was only a lack of the unpleasant sensation of fear; and, in fact, Fox had what Bitterblue interpreted to be an almost mathematical ability to calculate physical consequences. Fox knew better than anyone what was likely to happen if she slipped and fell out of the window. It was that knowledge that kept her careful, rather than the feeling of fear.

Bitterblue thought such a Grace was wasted in a castle servant, but in post-Leck Monsea, Gracelings were not the property of the kings; they were free to work where they liked. And Fox seemed to like doing odd jobs in the upper north floors of the castle—though Helda did talk about trying her as a spy sometime.

"Do you live in the castle, Fox?" asked Bitterblue.

"No, Lady Queen," answered Fox from her perch. "I live in the east city."

"You work strange hours, don't you?"

"It suits me, Lady Queen," Fox responded. "Sometimes, I work the night through."

"How do you get in and out of the castle at such odd hours? Does the Door Guard ever give you a hard time?"

"Well, it's never any trouble getting out; they'll let anyone out, Lady Queen. But to come in at the gatehouse at night, I show a bracelet that Helda's given me, and to get past the Lienid at your own doors, I show the bracelet again and give the password."

"The password?"

"It changes every day, Lady Queen."

"And how do you get the password yourself?"

"Helda hides it for us somewhere, in a different place every day of the week, Lady Queen."

"Oh? What is it today?"

" 'Chocolate pancake,' Lady Queen," said Fox.

Bitterblue lay on her back on the sofa for a while, giving this its due consideration. Every morning at breakfast, Helda asked Bitterblue to name a word or words that could serve as the key for any ciphered notes they were likely to pass to each other during the day. Yesterday morning, Bitterblue had chosen "chocolate pancake." "What was yesterday's password, Fox?"

" 'Salted caramel,'" said Fox.

Which had been the key Bitterblue had chosen two days ago. "What delicious passwords," Bitterblue said idly, an idea forming in her mind.

"Yes, Helda's passwords always make me hungry," Fox said.

A hood lay draped on the edge of Bitterblue's sofa, deep blue, like the sofa. Fox's hood, certainly; Bitterblue had seen her wear simple coverings like that before. It was much plainer than any of Bitterblue's coats.

"How often do you suppose the Lienid Door Guard changes guard?" Bitterblue asked Fox.

"Every hour on the hour, Lady Queen," Fox responded.

"Every hour! That's quite often."

"Yes, Lady Queen," replied Fox blandly. "I don't suppose there's much continuity in what any of them sees."

Fox stood on the solid floor again, bent over a bucket of suds, her back to the queen.

Bitterblue took the hood, tucked it under her arm, and slipped out of the room.

BITTERBLUE HAD WATCHED spies enter her rooms at night before, hooded, hunched, unrecognizable until they'd removed their covering garments. Her Lienid Door Guard, a gift from King Ror, guarded the castle's main entrance and the entrance to Bitterblue's living quarters, and did so with discretion. They were under no obligation to answer the questions of anyone but Bitterblue and Helda, not even the Monsean Guard, which was the kingdom's official army and police. This gave Bitterblue's personal spies the freedom to come and go without their presence being noted by her administration. It was a strange little provision of Ror's, to protect Bitterblue's privacy. Ror had a similar arrangement in Lienid.

The bracelet was no problem, for the bracelet Helda gave her spies was a plain leather cord on which hung a replica of a ring Ashen had worn. It was a proper Lienid ring in design: gold, inset with tiny, sparkly, deep gray stones. Every ring worn by a Lienid represented a particular family member, and this was the ring Ashen had worn for Bitterblue. Bitterblue had the original. She kept it in her mother's wooden chest in the bedroom, along with all of Ashen's rings.

It was strangely affecting to tie this ring to her wrist. Her mother had shown it to her many times, explained that she'd chosen the stones to match Bitterblue's eyes. Bitterblue hugged her wrist to her body, trying to decide what her mother would think of what she was about to do.

Well. And Mama and I snuck out of the castle once too. Though not this way; by the windows. And with good reason. She was trying to save me from him.

She did save me. She sent me on ahead and stayed behind to die.

Mama, I'm not sure why I'm doing what I'm about to do. Something is missing, do you see? Piles of paper at my desk in my tower, day in, day out. That can't be all there is. You understand, don't you?

SNEAKING WAS A kind of deceit. So was disguise. Just past midnight, wearing dark trousers and Fox's hood, the queen snuck out of her own rooms and stepped into a world of stories and lies.

2

SHE'D NEVER SEEN the bridges close up. Despite her yearly tours, Bitterblue had never been on the streets of the east city; she only knew the bridges from the heights of her tower, looking out at them from across the sky, not even certain they were real. Now, as Bitterblue stood at the base of Winged Bridge, she ran her fingers along a seam where pieces of cold marble joined to form the gargantuan foundations.

And attracted some attention. "Move along there," said a gruff man who'd come to the doorway of one of the dirty white stone buildings squeezed between the bridge's pillars. He emptied a bucket into the gutter. "We've no need of crackpots."

This seemed harsh for a person whose only crime was the touching of a bridge, but Bitterblue moved along obediently to avoid interaction. An awful lot of people were walking the streets at this hour. Every one of them gave her a fright. She skirted them when she could, pulling her hood low over her face, happy to be small.

Tall, narrow buildings leaned together, propping each other up, occasionally offering glimpses of the river in between. At every intersection, roads branched off in several directions, multiplying possibilities. She decided to stay within sight of the river for now, because she suspected that otherwise, she'd become lost and overwhelmed. But it was hard not to turn down some of those streets that wound away or stretched into darkness, promising secrets.

The river brought her to the next behemoth on her list, Monster Bridge. Bitterblue was absorbing more details now, even daring to glance into people's faces. Some were furtive and hurried, or exhausted, full of pain, and others were empty and expressionless. The buildings, many white stone, some clapboard, all washed with yellow light and rising into shadow, also impressed her, with how gaunt and run-down they seemed.

It was a misstep that landed her in the strange story place under Monster Bridge, though Leck also played a part. Hopping sideways into an alleyway to avoid a pair of large, lumbering men, she found herself trapped when the men turned into the alleyway too. She could have just pushed her way back out again, of course, but not without drawing attention to herself, so she scuttled on ahead, pretending she knew where she was going. Unfortunately, the alleyway ended abruptly, at a door in a stone wall, guarded by a man and a woman.

"Well?" the man said to her as she stood there in confusion. "What do you want, then? In or out?"

"I'm just going," said Bitterblue in a whisper.

"All right," said the man. "Off you go."

As she turned to obey, the men who'd followed her came upon them and moved past. The door opened to admit them, then closed, then opened again to release a small, cheerful group of young people. A voice escaped from inside: a deep, raspy rumble, indecipherable but melodic, a sort of voice she imagined a wizened old tree would speak with. It had the tone of someone telling a story.

And then it spoke a word she understood: Leck.

"In," she said to the man, deciding in a mad split second. He shrugged, not seeming to care, as long as she went someplace.

And so Bitterblue followed Leck's name into her first story room.

IT WAS A pub of some sort, with heavy wooden tables and chairs and a bar, lit by a hundred lamps and packed with men and women, standing, sitting, moving about, dressed plainly, drinking from cups. Bitterblue's relief that she had walked into nothing but a pub was so palpable that it gave her chills.

The room's attention was fixed on a man who stood on the bar telling a story. He had a crooked face and pitted skin that turned beautiful, somehow, as he spoke. The story he told was one Bitterblue recognized but didn't immediately trust, not because anything in the story itself seemed off, but because the man had one dark eye and one that shone pale blue. What was his Grace? A lovely speaking voice? Or was there something more sinister about it, something that kept this room in thrall?

Bitterblue multiplied 457 by 228 randomly, just to see how she felt afterwards. It took her a minute. 104,196. And no feeling of blankness or fog around the numbers; no sense that her mental grip on the numbers was in any way superior to her mental grip on anything else. It was no more than a lovely voice.

Some traffic around the entrance had shuffled Bitterblue straight to the bar. A woman stood before her suddenly, asking her what she wanted. "Cider," Bitterblue said, grasping for something a person might want, for she didn't suppose it was normal to ask for nothing. Oh—but here was a dilemma, for the woman would expect payment for the cider, wouldn't she? The last time Bitterblue had carried money was—she couldn't remember. A queen had no need for money.

A man beside her at the bar belched, fumbling with some coins spread before him that his fingers were too clumsy to collect. Without thinking, Bitterblue rested her arm on the bar, letting her wide sleeve cover two of the coins closest to her. Then she slipped the fingers of her other hand under her sleeve and fished the coins into her fist. A moment later, the coins were in her pocket and her empty hand rested innocently on the bar. When she glanced around, trying to look nonchalant, she caught the eyes of a young man who was staring at her with the smallest grin on his face. He leaned on a part of the bar that was at a right angle to hers, where he had a perfect view of her, her neighbors, and, she could only assume, her transgressions.

She looked away, ignoring his smile. When the bar lady brought the cider, Bitterblue plunked her coins on the counter, deciding to trust to fate that they were the right amount. The woman picked up the coins and put a smaller coin down. Grabbing it and the cup, Bitterblue slipped away from the bar and moved to a corner in the back, where there were more shadows, a wider view, and fewer people to notice her.

Now she could lower her guard and listen to the story. It was one that she'd heard many times; it was one she'd told. It was the story—true—of how her own father had come to the Monsean court as a boy. He'd come begging, wearing an eye patch, saying nothing of who he was or where he was from. He'd charmed the king and queen with tall tales he'd invented, tales about a land where the animals were violently colored, and the buildings were wide and tall as mountains, and glorious armies rose out of rock. No one had known who his parents were, or why he wore an eye patch, or why he'd told such stories, but he'd been loved. The king and queen, childless, had adopted him as their own son. When Leck had turned sixteen, the king, having no living family, had named Leck his heir.

Days later, the king and queen were dead from a mysterious illness that no one at court felt the need to question. The old king's advisers threw themselves into the river, for Leck could make people do things like that—or could push them into the river himself, then tell the witnesses that they'd seen something other than what they'd seen. Suicide, rather than murder. Leck's thirty-five-year reign of mental devastation had begun.

Bitterblue had heard this story before as an explanation. She had never once heard it presented as a story, the old king and queen coming alive with loneliness and gentleness, love for a boy. The advisers, wise and worried, devoted to their king and queen. The storyteller described Leck partly the way he'd been and partly the way Bitterblue knew he hadn't. He hadn't been a person who cackled and leered and rubbed his hands together villainously like the storyteller said. He'd been simpler than that. He'd spoken simply, reacted simply, and performed acts of violence with a simple, expressionless precision. He'd calmly done whatever he'd needed to do to make things the way he wanted them.

My father, thought Bitterblue. Then she reached for the coin in her pocket suddenly, ashamed of herself for stealing. Remembering that her hood was stolen too. I also take what I want. Did I get that from him?

The young man who knew she was a thief was a distracting sort of person. He seemed to have no wish to keep still, always moving, slipping past people who shuffled aside to let him by. Easy to keep track of, for he happened to be one of the most conspicuous people in the room, both Lienid and not-Lienid at the same time.

The Lienid, almost without exception, were a dark-haired, grayeyed people with a certain handsome set to their mouths and a certain sweep to their hair, like Skye, like Po, and gold in their ears and on their fingers, men and women, nobles and citizens alike. Bitterblue had inherited Ashen's dark hair and gray eyes and, though its effects were rather plainer on her than on others, something of the Lienid aspect. At any rate, she looked more Lienid than this fellow did.

His hair was brown like wet sand, sun-bleached almost white at the ends, his skin deeply freckled. His facial features, though nice enough, were not particularly Lienid, but the gold studs that flashed in his ears and the rings on his fingers—those were unquestionably Lienid. His eyes were impossibly, abnormally purple, so that one knew at once he wasn't just a plain person. And then, as one adjusted to his overall incongruity, one saw that of course the purple was of two different shades. He was a Graceling. And a Lienid, but he had not been born Lienid.

Bitterblue wondered what his Grace was.

Then, as he slipped past a man who was swigging from a cup, Bitterblue saw him dip into the man's pocket, remove something, and tuck it under his arm, almost faster than Bitterblue could believe. Raising his eyes, accidentally catching hers, he saw that she saw. This time, there was no amusement in the expression he directed at her. Only coldness, some insolence, and the hint of a high-eyebrowed threat.

He turned his back to her and made his way to the door, where he placed a hand on the shoulder of a young man with floppy dark hair who was apparently his friend, for the two of them left together. Getting it into her head to see where they were going, she abandoned her cider and followed, but when she stepped out into the alley, they were gone.

Not knowing the time, she returned to the castle, but paused at the foot of the drawbridge. She had stood in this very spot once, almost eight years ago. Her feet remembered and wanted to take her into the west city, the way she'd gone with her mother that night; her feet wanted to follow the river west until the city was far behind, cross the valleys to the plain before the forest. Bitterblue wanted to stand in the spot where Father had shot Mama in the back, shot her from his horse, in the snow, while Mama tried to run away. Bitterblue hadn't seen it. She'd been hiding in the forest, as Ashen had told her to do. But Po and Katsa had seen it. Sometimes Po described it for her, quietly, holding her hands. She'd imagined it so many times that it felt like a memory, but it wasn't. She hadn't been there, she hadn't screamed the way she imagined it. She hadn't jumped in front of the arrow, or knocked Mama out of the way, or thrown a knife and killed him in time.

A clock, striking two, brought Bitterblue back. There was nothing for her to the west except for a long and difficult walk, and memories that were sharp even from this distance. She pushed herself across the drawbridge.

In bed, exhausted, yawning, she couldn't understand, at first, why she wasn't falling asleep. Then she felt it, the streets thick with people, the shadows of buildings and bridges, the sound of the stories and the taste of cider; the fright that had pervaded all she'd done. Her body was thrumming with the life of the midnight city.

3

REGULAR WORK IS ruined for me now.

This was Bitterblue's thought the next morning, bleary-eyed at her desk in her tower. Her adviser Darby, returned from his drunken bender that everyone knew about but no one mentioned, kept running up from the lower offices, bringing paper up the spiral staircase for her to do boring things with. With every arrival, he exploded through the door, catapulted across the room, and stopped on a pin before her desk. Every departure was the same. Darby, when he was sober, was always wide awake and full of vim—always, for he had one yellow eye and one green and was Graced with not needing sleep.

Runnemood, in the meantime, lazed around the room being handsome, while Thiel, too stiff and grim to be handsome, glided around Runnemood and loomed over the desk, deciding in which order Bitterblue should be tortured by the paper. Rood was still absent.

Bitterblue had too many questions, and there were too many people here whom she couldn't ask. Did her advisers know that there was a room under Monster Bridge where people told stories about Leck? Why weren't the neighborhoods under the bridges relevant to her yearly tours? Was it because the buildings were falling apart? That had been a surprise to her. And how could she get her hands on some coins without arousing suspicion?

"I want a map," she said out loud.

"A map?" said Thiel, startled, then, rustling a sheaf of papers at her: "Of the location of this charter town?"

"No. A street map of Bitterblue City. I want to study a map. Send someone to get one, will you, Thiel?"

"Does this have anything to do with watermelons, Lady Queen?"

"Thiel, I just want a map! Get me a map!"

"Gracious," said Thiel. "Darby," he said, turning to that brighteyed personage as he burst once more into the room. "Send someone to the library for a street map of the city—a recent map—for the queen's perusal, would you?"

"A recent street map. Indeed," Darby said, spinning around and taking off again.

"We're procuring a map, Lady Queen," reported Thiel, turning back to Bitterblue.

"Yes," said Bitterblue sarcastically, rubbing her head. "I was here when it happened, Thiel."

"Is everything all right, Lady Queen? You seem a bit—ruffled."

"She's tired," Runnemood announced, perched in a window with his arms crossed. "Her Majesty is tired of charters and judgments and reports. If she wishes a map, she shall have one."

It annoyed Bitterblue that Runnemood understood. "I want to have more say in where I go on my tours from now on," she snapped.

"And so you shall," said Runnemood grandly. Honestly, she did not know how Thiel could stand him. Thiel was so plain and Runnemood so affected, yet the two of them worked together so comfortably, always capable of becoming a united front the moment Bitterblue stepped over the line of which only they knew the position. She decided to keep her mouth shut until the map arrived, to prevent herself from betraying the stratospheric heights of her irritability.

When it did arrive, it brought with it the royal librarian and a member of the Queen's Guard, Holt, for the librarian delivered so much more than she'd asked for that he couldn't carry it up the stairs without Holt's help. "Lady Queen," the librarian said. "As Your Majesty's request was disobligingly unspecific, I thought it best to deliver a range of maps, to increase the odds that one pleases you. It's my fervent wish to return to my work uninterrupted by your little people."

Bitterblue's librarian was Graced with the ability to read inhumanly fast and remember every word forever—or so he said, and certainly he seemed to have this skill. But Bitterblue wondered sometimes if he mightn't also be Graced with unpleasantness. His name was Death. It was pronounced to rhyme with "teeth," but Bitterblue liked to mispronounce it by accident on occasion.

"If that will be all, Lady Queen," said Death, dumping an armload of scrolls onto the edge of her desk, "I'll be going."

Half of the scrolls rolled away and hit the floor with hollow thuds. "Really," said Thiel crossly, bending to collect them, "I was quite clear to Darby that we wished a single, recent map. Take these away, Death. They're unnecessary."

"All paper maps are recent," said Death with a sniff, "when one considers the vastness of geological time."

"Her Majesty merely wishes to see the city as it is today," said Thiel.

"A city is a living organism, always changing—"

"Her Majesty wishes—"

"I wish you would all go away," said Bitterblue desolately, more to herself than to anyone else. Both men continued arguing. Runnemood joined in. And then Holt, the Queen's Guard, placed his maps on the desk, neatly so they would not fall, tipped Thiel over one shoulder, tipped Death over the other, and stood under his load. In the astonished silence that followed, Holt lumbered toward Runnemood, who, understanding, let out a snort and stalked from the room of his own accord. Then Holt carried his outraged burdens away on either shoulder, just as they got their voices back. Bitterblue could hear them screaming their indignation all the way down the stairs.

Holt was a guard in his forties with lovely eyes of gray and silver. A large, broad man with a friendly, open face, he was Graced with strength.

"That was odd," Bitterblue mused aloud. But it was nice to be alone. Opening a scroll randomly, she saw that it was an astronomical map of the constellations above the city. Cursing Death, she pushed it aside. The next one was a map of the castle before Leck's renovations, when the courtyards had numbered four instead of seven, and the roofs of her tower, the courtyards, and the upper corridors had contained no glass. The next was, amazingly, a street map of the city, but a strange map with words obliterated here and there and no bridges at all. The fourth, finally, was a modern-day map, for the bridges were shown. Yes, it was quite clearly present-day, for it was titled "Bitterblue City," not "Leck City" or the name of any previous king.

Bitterblue shifted the stacks of paper on her desk so that they held down the corners of her map, spitefully pleased to find a use for them that didn't involve her having to read them. Then she settled in to study the map, determined, at least, to have a better sense of geography the next time she snuck out.

EVERYONE REALLY IS odd, she thought to herself later, after another encounter with Judge Quall. She'd come upon him in the foyer outside the lower offices, balancing on one foot, then the other, scowling into the middle distance. "Femurs," he'd muttered, not noticing her. "Clavicles. Vertebrae."

"For someone who doesn't like to talk about bones, Quall," Bitterblue had said without prologue, "you bring them up an awful lot."

His eyes had passed over her, empty; then sharpening and momentarily confused. "Indeed, I do, Lady Queen," he'd said, seeming to pull himself together. "Forgive me. Sometimes I get lost in thought and lose track of the moment."

Later, at dinner in her sitting room, Bitterblue asked Helda, "Do you notice any peculiar behavior at this court?"

"Peculiar behavior, Lady Queen?"

"Like, for example, today Holt picked up Thiel and Death and carried them out of my office on his shoulders because they were annoying me," said Bitterblue. "Isn't that a bit odd?"

"Very odd," declared Helda. "I'd like to see him try that with me. We've a couple of new gowns for you, Lady Queen. Would you like to try them this evening?"

Bitterblue was indifferent to her gowns, but she always agreed to a fitting, for she found it soothing to be fussed over by Helda—Helda's soft, quick touches and her mutterings through a mouthful of pins. Her careful eyes and hands that considered Bitterblue's body and made the right decisions. Fox helped tonight too, holding fabric aside or smoothing it as Helda asked her to. It was centering to be touched. "I admire Fox's skirts that are divided into trousers," said Bitterblue to Helda. "Might I try some?"

Later, after Fox had gone and Helda had retired to bed, Bitterblue unearthed her trousers and Fox's hood from the floor of the dressing room. Bitterblue wore a knife in her boot during the day and slept with knives in sheathes on each arm at night. It was what Katsa had taught her to do. That night, Bitterblue strapped on all three knives, as security against the unpredictable.

Just before leaving, she rummaged through Ashen's chest, where she kept not only Ashen's jewelry but some of her own. She had so many useless things—pretty, she supposed, but it wasn't in her nature to wear jewelry. Finding a plain gold choker that her uncle had sent from Lienid, she tucked it into the shirt inside her hood. There were such things as pawnshops under the bridges. She'd noticed them last night, and one or two had been open.

"I ONLY WORK with people I know," said the man at the first pawnshop.

At the second pawnshop, the woman behind the counter said exactly the same thing. Still standing in the doorway, Bitterblue pulled the choker out and held it up for her to see. "Hm," the woman said. "Let me take a look at that."

Half a minute later, Bitterblue had traded the choker for an enormous pile of coins and a terse "Just don't tell me where you got it, boy." It was so many more coins than Bitterblue had reckoned for that her pockets sagged and jingled in the streets, until she thought to jam some of them into her boots. Not comfortable, but far less conspicuous.

She saw a street fight she didn't understand, nasty, abrupt, and bloody, for barely had two groups of men started pushing and shoving each other than knives came out flashing and thrusting. She ran on, ashamed but not wanting to see how it ended. Katsa and Po could have broken them up. Bitterblue should have, as the queen, but she wasn't the queen right now, and she would've been mad to try.

The story under Monster Bridge that night was told by a tiny woman with a huge voice who stood stock-still on the bar, grasping her skirts in her hands. She wasn't Graced, but Bitterblue was mesmerized anyway, and nettled with the sense that she'd heard this story before. It was about a man who'd fallen into a boiling hot spring in the eastern mountains, then been rescued by an enormous golden fish. It was a dramatic story involving a bizarrely colored animal, just like the tales Leck had told. Was that how she knew it? Had Leck told her it? Or had she read it in a book when she was little? If she'd read it in a book, was it a true story? If Leck had told it, was it false? How could anyone know, eight years later, what was which?

A man near the bar smashed his cup over the head of another man. In the time it took Bitterblue to register her surprise, a brawl had erupted. She watched in amazement as the entire room seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing. The tiny woman on the bar used her advantage of height to deliver a few admirable kicks.

At the edge of the brawl, where a civilized minority was trying to keep out of the way, someone knocked against someone brownhaired, who pitched his cider onto Bitterblue's front.

"Oh, ratbuggers. Look, lad, I'm awfully sorry," Brown Hair said, grabbing a dubious bit of towel from a table and using it to dab at Bitterblue, much to her alarm. She recognized him. He was the companion of the purple-eyed Graceling thief from the previous night, whom she now recognized as well, beyond Brown Hair, launching himself cheerily into the melee.

"Your friend," Bitterblue said, pushing Brown Hair's hands away. "You should help your friend."

He came back at her determinedly with the towel. "I expect he's having a marvelous—time," he said, ending on a note of bewilderment as he uncovered a corner of braid under Bitterblue's hood. His eyes dropped to her chest, where, apparently, he found enough evidence to elucidate the situation.

"Great rivers," he said, snatching his hand back. He focused for the first time on her face, with no great success, for Bitterblue pulled her hood even lower. "Forgive me, miss. Are you all right?"

"I'm perfectly fine. Let me pass."

The Graceling and the man trying to kill the Graceling bashed into Brown Hair from behind, wedging Brown Hair more firmly against Bitterblue. He was a pleasant-looking fellow, with a lopsided face and nice hazel eyes. "Allow my friend and me to escort you safely from this place, miss," he said.

"I don't need escort. I just need you to let me by."

"It's past midnight and you're small."

"Too small for anyone to bother with."

"If only that were the way of things in Bitterblue City. Just give me a moment to collect my rather overly enthusiastic friend," he said as he was buffeted again from behind, "and we'll see you get home. My name is Teddy. His is Saf, and he isn't really the blockhead he seems just now."

Teddy turned and waded heroically into the fray, and Bitterblue scuttled along the room's perimeter, making her escape. Outside, knives gripped in both hands, she ran, cutting through a graveyard, slipping into an alleyway so narrow that her shoulders touched the sides.

Her mind tried to tick off streets and landmarks from the map she'd memorized, but it was difficult on true ground, rather than paper. Her vague direction was south. Slowing to a walk, she entered a street of buildings that seemed broken all to pieces and decided never again to put herself in a situation in which she had to run with so much change in her boots.

Some of these buildings looked as if they'd been cannibalized for their wood. A shape in a gutter that formulated itself into a corpse startled her, then scared her even more when it snored. A man who smelled dead but apparently wasn't. A hen snoozed against his chest, his arm curled around it protectively.

When she came upon a whole new storytelling place, she knew somehow what it was. It had the same setup as the other place, a door in an alley, people passing in and out, and two tough-looking characters standing at the door with arms crossed.

Bitterblue's body decided for her. The watchdogs loomed but didn't stop her. Inside the door, steps led down into the earth, to another door that, when opened, dropped her into a room glowing with light, smelling of cellars and cider, and warm with the hypnotic voice of another storyteller.

Bitterblue bought a drink.

The story was, of all things, about Katsa. It was one of the horrible true stories from Katsa's childhood, when Katsa's uncle Randa, king of the seven kingdoms' most central kingdom, the Middluns, had used her for her fighting skill, forcing her to kill and maim his enemies on his behalf.

Bitterblue knew these stories; she'd heard them from Katsa herself. Parts of this storyteller's version were correct. Katsa had hated having to kill for Randa. But other parts were exaggerated or untrue. The fights in this story were more sensational, more bloody than Katsa had ever allowed them to become, and Katsa was more melodramatic than Bitterblue could imagine her ever being. Bitterblue wanted to yell at this storyteller for getting Katsa wrong, yell in Katsa's defense, and it confused her that the crowd seemed to love this wrong version of Katsa. To them, that Katsa was real.

AS BITTERBLUE APPROACHED the castle's eastern wall that night, she noticed a few things at once. First, two of the lanterns atop the wall had gone out, leaving a section in such pitch darkness that Bitterblue glanced around the street, suspicious, and found that her suspicions were justified. The streetlamps along that stretch had also gone out. Next, she saw movement, nearly imperceptible, midway up the dark, flat wall. A moving shape—surely a person?—that stilled its movement as a member of the Monsean Guard marched past above. The movement started up again once the guard had gone.

Bitterblue realized that she was watching a person climb the east castle wall. She stepped into the seclusion of a shop doorway and tried to work out whether she should start shouting now, or wait until the perpetrator had made it to the top of the high wall, where he would be stuck, and the guards would be more likely to be able to catch him.

Except that the person didn't climb onto the wall. He stopped climbing just below the top—just below a small stone shadow that Bitterblue assumed, from its placement, was one of the many gargoyles that balanced on ledges or hung over the edge to stare at the ground below. A sort of scraping noise commenced that she couldn't identify, then stopped, momentarily, as the guard passed again above. Then started up again. This went on for quite some time. Bitterblue's mystification was turning to boredom when suddenly the person said, "Oof," a cracking noise followed, and the person slid, in a somewhat-controlled fall, down the wall again, with the gargoyle. A second person, whom Bitterblue hadn't noticed until this point, moved in the shadows at the base of the wall and caught the first person, more or less, though a grunt and a series of whispered curses suggested that one of them had gotten the worst of it. The second figure produced some sort of sack into which the first figure lowered the gargoyle, and then, sack over the shoulder of the first figure's back, they snuck away together.

They passed directly in front of Bitterblue, shrinking back against her doorway. She recognized them easily. They were the pleasant brown-haired fellow, Teddy, and his Graceling friend, Saf.

4

"LADY QUEEN," SAID Thiel sternly the next morning. "Are you even paying attention?"

She wasn't paying attention. She was trying to come up with a casual way to broach an unapproachable topic. How is everyone feeling today? Did you all sleep well? Anyone missing any gargoyles? "Of course I'm paying attention," she snapped.

"I daresay that if I asked you to describe the last five things you've signed, Lady Queen, you'd be at a loss."

What Thiel didn't understand was that this kind of work required no attention. "Three charters for three coastal towns," Bitterblue said, "a work order for a new door to be fitted to the vault of the royal treasury, and a letter to my uncle, the King of Lienid, requesting him to bring Prince Skye when he comes."

Thiel cleared his throat a bit sheepishly. "I stand corrected, Lady Queen. It was your unhesitant signing of that last that led me to wonder."

"Why should I hesitate? I like Skye."

"Do you?" said Thiel, then hesitated himself. "Really?" he added, beginning to look so thoroughly pleased about things that Bitterblue began to regret goading him, for that was what she was doing.

"Thiel," she said. "Are your spies good for nothing? Skye favors men, not women, and certainly not me. Understand? The worst is that he's practical, so he might even marry me if we asked him. Maybe that would be fine with you, but it wouldn't with me."

"Oh," Thiel said with obvious disappointment. "That is a relevant piece of information, Lady Queen, if it's true. Are you certain?"

"Thiel," she said impatiently, "he's not secretive about it. Ror himself has recently come to know. Haven't you wondered why Ror has never suggested the match?"

"Well," Thiel said, then resisted saying anything further. The threat of Bitterblue's cruelty if he persisted on the topic still lingered in this room. "Shall we review some census results today, Lady Queen?"

"Yes, please." Bitterblue liked reviewing the kingdom's census results with Thiel. The gathering of the information fell 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 falling 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 killed. 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 wall. 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 well—"

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

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

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

"Well, 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 wall, 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 well 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 wall 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, yellow 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 generally 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 wall. The glass ceilings of the castle's top level corridors made her nervous about being seen by guards patrolling 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 well 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 walls. 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 walls, all five stories. Gargoyles, more gargoyles, perched on high ledges, scaled walls, 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 Quall, 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 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 cellar 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 telling 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 wall; she'd noted his sun-darkened skin and bleached hair. Suddenly now, the way he carried himself became acutely familiar. He had a certain ease of movement and a gleam in his eyes that she'd seen before in men who'd been sailors, but not just sailors. Bitterblue wondered if Saf might be that particular brand of sailor who volunteered to climb to the top of the mast during a gale.

She wondered what he was doing so far north of Monport, and, again, what his Grace was. From the bruising around his eyebrow tonight and the raw skin on one cheekbone, it looked neither to be fighting nor quick mending.

Teddy wove through the tables bearing a mug in each fist, one of which he handed to Saf. He set himself up at Bitterblue's other side, which, as her stool was in the corner, meant that they had trapped her.

"The polite thing," Teddy murmured to her sidelong, "would be for you to tell us your name, as I've given ours."

Bitterblue did not mind Saf's proximity so much when Teddy was near, near enough that she could see the smudged ink on his fingers. Teddy had the feeling of a bookkeeper, or a clerk, or at any rate, a person who would not transform suddenly into a renegade. She said quietly, "Is it polite for two men to trap a woman in a corner?"

"Teddy would have you believe we're doing it for your own safety," Saf said, his accent plainly Lienid. "He'd be lying. It's pure suspicion. We don't trust people who come to the story rooms in disguise."

"Oh, come now!" Teddy said, loudly enough that a man or two nearby grunted at him to shush. "Speak for yourself," he whispered. "I, for one, am concerned. Fights break out. There are lunatics in the streets, and thieves."

Saf snorted. "Thieves, eh? If you'd stop prattling, we could hear the tale of this fabler. Rather close to my heart, this one."

"Prattle," Teddy repeated, his eyes lit up like stars. "Prattle. I must add it to my list. I believe I've overlooked it."

"Ironic," Saf said.

"Oh, I haven't overlooked ironic."

"I meant it's ironic that you should've overlooked prattle."

"Yes," Teddy said huffily, "I suppose it would be something like you overlooking an opportunity to break your head pretending you're Prince Po reborn. I'm a writer," he added, turning back to Bitterblue.

"Shut your mouth, Teddy," said Saf.

"And printer," Teddy continued, "reader, speller. Whatever folks need, as long as it has to do with words."

"Speller?" said Bitterblue. "Do people really pay you to spell things?"

"They bring letters they've written and ask me to turn them into something legible," Teddy said. "The illiterate ask me to teach them how to sign their names to documents."

"Should they be signing their names to documents if they're illiterate?"

"No," Teddy said, "probably not, but they do, because they're required to, by landlords or employers, or lien holders they trust because they can't read well enough to know not to. That's why I serve as reader too."

"Are there so many illiterate people in the city?"

Teddy shrugged. "What would you say, Saf?"

"I'd guess thirty people in a hundred can read," Saf said, his eyes glued to the fabler, "and you talk too much."

"Thirty percent!" Bitterblue exclaimed, for these were not the statistics she'd seen. "Surely it's more than that!"

"Either you're new to Monsea," Teddy said, "or you're still stuck in King Leck's spell. Or you live in a hole in the ground and only come out at nights."

"I work in the queen's castle," Bitterblue said, improvising smoothly, "and I suppose I'm used to the castle ways. Everyone who lives under her roof reads and writes."

"Hm," Teddy said, squinting doubtfully at this. "Well, most people in the city read and write well enough to function in their own trades. A metalsmith can read an order for knives and a farmer knows how to label his crates beans or corn. But the percentage who could understand this story if it were handed to them on paper," Teddy said, tilting his floppy hair at the storyteller—fabler, Saf had called him—"is probably close enough to what Saf said. One of Leck's legacies. And one of the driving forces behind my book of words."

"Book of words?"

"Oh, yes. I'm writing a book of words."

Saf touched Teddy's arm. Instantly, almost before Teddy had finished his sentence, they left her, too quickly for Bitterblue to ask whether any book had ever been written that was not a book of words.

Near the door, Teddy looked an invitation back at her. She declined with a shake of her head, trying not to reveal her exasperation, for she was certain she'd just seen Saf slip something out from under a random man's arm and slide it up his own sleeve. What was it this time? It had looked like a roll of papers.

It didn't matter. Whatever those two were up to, they were up to no good, and she was going to have to decide what to do about them.

The fabler began a new story. Bitterblue was startled to find that it was, again, the story of Leck's origins and rise to power. Tonight's fabler told it just a bit differently than the last had. She listened hard, hoping that this man would say something new, a missing image or word, a key that would turn in a lock and open a door behind which all her memories and all she'd been told would make sense.

THEIR SOCIABILITY—OR, Teddy's—bolstered her courage. This, in turn, terrified her, though not enough to stop her seeking them out over the next few nights. Thieves, she reminded herself whenever she crossed paths with them in the story rooms, exchanged greetings, said a few words. Wretched, ingrate thieves, and what I'm doing, trying to put myself in their way, is dangerous.

August was coming to an end. "Teddy," she said one night as the two of them wandered toward her, then huddled with her at the back of the dark, crowded, cellar story room near the silver docks, "I don't understand your book. Isn't every book a book of words?"

"I must say," Teddy responded, "that if we're to run into each other so often, and if you're to call us by name, then we must have a name for you."

"Call me whatever you like."

"Hear that, Saf?" Teddy said, leaning across Bitterblue, his face brightening. "A word challenge. But how shall we proceed, when we know neither what she does for her bread nor what she looks like under that hood?"

"She's part Lienid," Saf said, not taking his eyes off the fabler.

"Is she? You've seen?" Teddy asked, impressed, stooping, and trying, unsuccessfully, to get a better look at Bitterblue's face. "Well then, we should give her a color name. What about Redgreenyellow?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. It makes her sound like a pepper."

"Well, what about Grayhood?"

"First of all, her hood is blue, and secondly, she's not a grandmother. I doubt she's more than sixteen."

Bitterblue was tired of Teddy and Saf crushing her between them, having a whispered conversation about her, practically in her face. "I'm as old as both of you," she said, even though she suspected she wasn't, "and I'm smarter, and I can probably fight as well as you can."

"Her personality is not gray," Saf said.

"Indeed," Teddy said. "She's all sparks."

"How about Sparks, then?"

"Perfect. So, you're curious about my book of words, Sparks?"

The absurdity of the name tickled, flummoxed, and annoyed her all at once; she wished she hadn't given them free rein to choose, but she had, so there was no use complaining. "I am."

"Well, I suppose it'd be more accurate to say it's a book about words. It's called a dictionary. Very few have ever been attempted. The idea is to set down a list of words and then write a definition for each word. Spark," he said grandly. "A small bit of fire, as in, 'A stray spark burst from the oven and ignited the curtains.' You see, Sparks? A person reading my dictionary will be able to learn the meanings of all the words there are."

"Yes," Bitterblue said, "I've heard of such books. Except that if it uses words to define words, then don't you already need to know the definitions of words in order to understand it?"

Saf seemed to be expanding with glee. "With one stroke," he said, "Sparks fells Teddren's blasted book of words."

"Yes, all right," Teddy said, in the forbearing tone of one who's had to hold up his side of this argument before. "In the abstract, that's true. But in practice, I'm certain it'll be quite useful, and I mean it to be the most thorough dictionary ever written. I'm also writing a book of truths."

"Teddy," said Saf, "go get the next round."

"Sapphire told me you saw him steal," continued Teddy to Bitterblue, unconcerned. "You mustn't misunderstand. He only steals back that which has already been—"

Now Saf's fist grabbed Teddy's collar and Teddy choked over his words. Saf said nothing, only stood there, holding Teddy at his throat, looking daggers into Teddy's eyes.

"—stolen," spluttered Teddy. "Perhaps I'll go get the next round."

"I could kill him," Saf said, watching Teddy go. "I think I will later."

"What did he mean, you only steal that which has already been stolen?"

"Let's talk about your thievery instead, Sparks," said Saf. "Do you steal from the queen, or only poor sods trying to have a drink?"

"What about you? Do you steal both on land and on sea?"

This made Saf laugh, quietly, which was a thing Bitterblue had never seen him do before. She was rather proud of herself. He nursed his drink, ran his eyes over the room, and took his time answering.

"I was raised on a Lienid ship by Lienid sailors," he admitted finally. "I'm about as likely to steal from a sailor as I am to put a nail in my head. My true family is Monsean, and a few months ago I came here to spend some time with my sister. I met Teddy, who offered me a job in his printing shop, which is good work, until I get the urge for leaving again. There. You've had my story."

"Great chunks of it are missing," said Bitterblue. "Why were you raised on a Lienid ship if you're Monsean?"

"All of yours is missing," said Saf, "and I don't trade my secrets for nothing. If you recognize me for a sailor, then you've spent some time working on a ship."

"Maybe," said Bitterblue testily.

"Maybe?" said Saf, amused. "What do you do in Bitterblue's castle?"

"I bake bread in the kitchens," she said, hoping he wouldn't ask any specifics about those kitchens, because she couldn't remember ever seeing them.

"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 fell in love with my mother. He brought her here to live. He was killed 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 alleys and graveyards, the smell 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.

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 ill. The entire struggle was so silent and the movements so furiously controlled that when the hooded man finally broke away and Saf whispered to Bitterblue, "Give Teddy your shoulder. Act normal. He's only drunk," Bitterblue thought Teddy actually 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 Alley and Bow Street?"

It was a location close to the castle, by the east wall. "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 skilled enough to patch the holes, for the contents of Teddy's intestine even now could be spilling into his abdomen, and this would lead to an infection—fever, swelling, 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 bellies: 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 Alley 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 hallway and took a chance, thrusting Ashen's ring into the face of a member of the Monsean Guard who was drowsing under a wall 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 tall 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 call me Queen tonight," Bitterblue whispered as they raced along hallways 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 smallest 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 Teddren's and Print 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 falling, 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 smelled like blood and sweat: a sour, metallic combination that was instantly familiar to her. Saf smelled 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.

WHEN ONE HAS no occupation to pass the time while a healer determines whether she can patch up a friend's dying body, that time moves slowly. And indeed, Bitterblue had little occupation, for though Madlen required a stoked fire and boiling water and good light and extra hands as she dug her implements into Teddy's side, she did not require as many helpers as were available to her. Bitterblue had a long time to observe Saf and his two companions as the night wore on. She decided that the blond woman must be Saf's sister. She wore no Lienid gold and, of course, her eyes were not purple, but still, she had Saf's look, his lightish hair, and anger sat on her face the same way it sat on Saf's. The other one might be Teddy's sister. She had exactly Teddy's mop of brown hair and clear hazel eyes.

Bitterblue had seen both women before, in the story rooms. They'd chatted, sipped drinks, laughed, and had never given the slightest indication, whenever their brothers walked by, that they were acquainted.

They and Saf hovered at Madlen's elbows at the table, following her directions exactly: scrubbing their hands and arms; boiling implements and handing them to her without touching them directly; standing where she indicated. They didn't seem concerned by Madlen's odd surgical attire that nearly concealed her, her hair clamped down under a scarf and another scarf tied over her mouth. Nor did they seem tired.

Bitterblue stood nearby, waiting, struggling at times to keep her eyes open. The tension in the room was exhausting.

The place was small, undecorated, roughly furnished with a few wooden chairs and the wooden table Teddy lay on. A small stove, a couple of closed doors, and a narrow staircase leading upstairs. Teddy breathed shallowly, unconscious on the table, his skin damp and off-color, and the one time Bitterblue tried to focus closely on Madlen's work, she found her healer, head tilted to compensate for her missing eye, placidly taking needle and thread to a mucusy mass of pink stuff protruding from Teddy's abdomen. After that, Bitterblue stayed close, ready to jump if anyone needed anything, but content enough not to watch.

Her hood fell back once while she was struggling with a cauldron of water. They all saw her face. Her breathlessness at that moment had to do with a good deal more than the heavy load she was carrying, but it became clear enough, after a second or two, that Madlen was the only person in the room who'd ever laid eyes on the queen.

IN THE EARLY morning, Madlen set down the bottle of ointment with which she'd been working and stretched her neck to left and right.

"There's nothing more we can do. I'll sew the wound closed, and then we must wait and see. I'll stay with him through the morning, just for caution's sake," she said, with a quick, bold glance at Bitterblue that the queen understood to be a request for permission. Bitterblue nodded.

"How long must we wait?" asked Teddy's sister.

"If he's to die, we may know quite soon," Madlen said. "If he's to live, we won't know it for certain until several days have gone by. I'll give you medicines to fight infection and restore his strength. He must take them regularly. If he doesn't, I can promise you he will die."

Teddy's sister, so composed during the surgery, now spoke with a violence that startled Bitterblue. "He's careless. He talks too much; he befriends people he shouldn't. He always has and I've warned him, I've begged him. If he dies, it'll be his own fault and I'll never forgive him." Tears streamed down her face and Saf's startled sister embraced her. The distraught woman sobbed against her friend's breast.

Suddenly feeling as if her presence was an intrusion, Bitterblue crossed the room and went into the shop, pulling the door shut behind her. There, she flattened herself against the wall, breathing carefully, confused to find that the other woman's tears had brought her own tears close.

The door beside her opened. Saf stood in the half-light, fully clothed now, the blood cleaned from his skin and a dripping white cloth in his hands.

"Checking to see if I'm snooping around?" said Bitterblue, her voice coming harshly from her throat.

Saf wiped the doorknob clean of its bloody smears. He went to the front of the shop and cleaned that door handle too. As he walked back toward the light, she saw his expression clearly but didn't know what to make of it, for he seemed angry and happy and bewildered all at once. He stopped beside her and shut the door to the back room, cutting off the light.

Bitterblue didn't care to be alone with him in the dark, whatever his expression. Her hands moved to the knives in her sleeves and she took a step away from him, bumping into something pointy that made her yelp.

He spoke then, not seeming to notice her distress. "She had an ointment that slowed his bleeding," he said wonderingly. "She cut him open, pulled part of him out, fixed it, and stuck it back in again. She's given us so many medicines that I can't keep track of what they're all for, and when Tilda tried to pay her, she would only take a few coppers."

Yes, Bitterblue could share Saf's wonder. And she was pleased with Madlen for taking the coppers, for Madlen was the queen's healer, after all. If she'd refused payment, it might have seemed as if she'd performed this healing on behalf of the queen.

"Sparks," Saf said, surprising her with the intensity of his voice. "Roke could not have done what Madlen did. Even when I sent you to Roke, I knew Roke couldn't save him. I thought no healer could."

"We don't know yet if he's saved," she reminded him gently.

"Tilda is right," he said. "Teddy is careless and too trusting. You're the classic example. I couldn't believe the way he took to you, knowing nothing of you—and when we learned you came from the castle, there was such a fight. Did no good, of course; he sought you out the same as always. And the truth is, if he hadn't, he'd be dead now. It's your castle Graceling who's saved his life."

At the end of a long night of forced wakefulness and worry, the notion that these friends were the queen's enemy was deeply depressing. How she wished she could set her spies on them without arousing Helda's suspicions as to how she knew them.

She said, "I suppose I don't need to tell you that Madlen's presence here tonight must be kept quiet. Take care no one notices her when she leaves."

"You're quite the riddle, Sparks."

"You're one to talk. Why would anybody need to kill a gargoyle thief?"

Saf's mouth went hard. "How did you—"

"I watched you do it."

"You're a sneak."

"And you're partial to a fight. I've seen it. You're not going to try anything stupid in revenge, are you? If you start knifing people—"

"I don't knife people, Sparks," Saf said, "except to stop them knifing me."

"Good," she said weakly, relieved. "Me neither."

At this, Saf began to laugh, a soft chuckle that grew until Bitterblue was also smiling. A gray light seeped through the edges of the shutters. Shapes were beginning to take form in this room: tables piled high with paper; vertical stands with strange cylindrical attachments; an enormous structure in the center of the room, like a night ship rising from water, gleaming dimly in places as if parts of it were made of metal. "What is that thing?" she asked, pointing. "Is that Teddy's printing press?"

"A baker starts work before the rising sun," Saf said, ignoring her. "You'll be late to work this morning, Sparks, and the queen will have no fluffy morning bread."

"A bit dull for you, is it, honest office work, after a life on the sea?"

"You must be tired," he said blandly. "I'll walk you home."

Bitterblue took a perverse comfort in his lack of trust. "All right," she said. "Let's just look in on Teddy first."

Pushing away from the wall, following Saf back through the doorway, legs heavy, Bitterblue suppressed a yawn. This was going to be one long day.

TRUDGING THE STREETS toward the castle, Bitterblue was relieved that Saf seemed not to expect conversation. In the growing light, his face was alert, his arms swinging from strong, straight shoulders. He probably gets more sleep in one night than I do in a week, Bitterblue thought crossly. He probably goes home after his late nights and sleeps until the next day's sunset. Criminals don't have to wake at six so they can start signing charters at seven.

He rubbed his head vigorously then, until his hair stood out like the feathers of an addled river bird, then muttered something under his breath that sounded both desolate and angry. Her irritation vanished. Teddy had looked only slightly better than dead when they'd gone in to check on him, his face mask-like, his lips blue. The line of Madlen's mouth had been grim.

"Saf," Bitterblue said, reaching for his arm to stop him. "Get what rest you can today, won't you? You must take care of yourself if you're to be any use to Teddy."

A corner of his mouth turned up. "I've limited experience with mothers, Sparks, but that strikes me as a rather motherly thing to say."

In the light of day, one of his eyes was a soft reddish purple. The other, just as soft and deep, was purplish blue.

Her uncle had given her a necklace with a stone of that purplish blue hue. In daylight or firelight the gem was alive with a brilliance that shifted and changed. It was a Lienid sapphire.

"You were given your name after your eyes settled," she said, "and by the Lienid."

"Yes," he said, simply. "I've a Monsean name too, of course, given to me by my true family when I was born. But Sapphire is the name I've always known."

His eyes were rather too pretty, she thought, his entire freckled, innocent aspect was too pretty, for a person she wouldn't trust to safekeep anything she ever hoped to see again. He was not like his eyes. "Saf, what is your Grace?"

He grinned. "It's taken you a good week to come out and ask, Sparks."

"I'm a patient person."

"Not to mention that you only believe what you've worked out for yourself."

She snorted. "Which is as it should be, where you're concerned."

"I don't know what my Grace is."

This earned him a skeptical look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just what I said. I don't know."

"Balls. Don't Graces become plain during childhood?"

He shrugged. "Whatever it is, it must be a thing I've never had any use for. Like, oh, I don't know, eating a cake the size of a barrel without getting indigested, except that's not it, because I've tried that one. Trust me," he said, with a roll of his eyes and an apathetic, long-suffering wave. "I've tried everything."

"Right," said Bitterblue. "At least I know it's not telling lies people believe, because I don't believe you."

"I don't lie to you, Sparks," said Saf, not sounding particularly offended.

Subsiding into silence, Bitterblue began walking again. She'd never seen the east city lit by the sun. A dirty stone flower shop leaned perilously to one side, buttressed with wooden beams and slapped over in some places with bright white paint. Elsewhere, sloppy wooden planks covered a hole in a tin roof, the planks painted silver to match. A bit farther on, broken wooden shutters had been mended with strips of canvas, the wood and canvas alike painted blue like the sky.

Why would anyone go to the trouble of painting shutters—or a house, or anything—without repairing them properly first?

WHEN BITTERBLUE SHOWED her ring to the Lienid Guard at the gatehouse and entered the castle, it was full light. When, hood pulled low, she showed the ring again and whispered yesterday's cipher key, "maple tart," to the guards outside her rooms, they cracked the big doors open for her, their own heads bowed.

Inside her entrance foyer, she took stock. Far down the hallway to the left, the door to Helda's apartments was closed. To the right, Bitterblue heard no one moving about in the sitting room. Turning left and entering her bedroom, she pulled her cloak over her head. When her eyes emerged from the garment, she jumped, almost screamed, for Po sat on the chest against the wall, gold gleaming in his ears and on his fingers, arms crossed, appraising her evenly.

6

"COUSIN," BITTERBLUE SAID, taking hold of herself. "Would it kill you to be announced, like a normal guest?"

Po raised an eyebrow. "I've known since I arrived last night that you weren't where everyone supposed you to be. As the night wore on, that state of affairs did not change. At what point would you have liked me to rustle up a clerk and demand to be announced?"

"All right, but you've no right to sneak into my bedroom."

"I didn't sneak in. Helda sent me in. I told her you wanted me to wake you with breakfast."

"If you lied your way in, then you snuck your way in." Then she saw, out of the corner of her eye, a breakfast tray piled high with dirty dishes and used cutlery. "You've eaten everything!" she said indignantly.

"It's hungry work," he said blandly, "sitting up in my rooms all night, waiting and worrying."

A long moment of silence stretched out between them. Her conversation to this point had mostly been an attempt to distract him while she gathered her feelings: gathered them and ejected them, so that she could face him with a mind that was blank and smooth, with no thoughts for him to read. She was fairly good at this. Even bleary-headed and shaky with fatigue, she was good at emptying her mind.

Head tilted now, he seemed to be watching her. Only six people in the world knew that Po had no eyesight and that his Grace was not hand-fighting, as he claimed; that it was a kind of mind reading instead, that allowed him to sense people and the physicality of things. In the eight years since the fall that had lost him his sight, he'd perfected the technique of pretending he could see, and tended to make it his habit even with the six who knew he couldn't. The deceit was a necessity. People didn't like mind readers, and kings exploited them; Po had been pretending not to be one all his life. It was a bit too late to stop pretending now.

She thought she knew what Po was doing, sitting there, his silver-gold eyes glimmering at her softly. He very much wanted to know where she'd been all night and why she was disguised—but Po didn't like to steal the thoughts of his friends. His mind reading had limits: He could only ever read thoughts that bore some relation to himself; but, after all, most of a person's thoughts during an interrogation bore some relation to the interrogator. And so right now, he was trying to come up with a nonaggressive way to ask her for an explanation: vague and non-leading words that would allow her to answer as she wished, and not force an emotional reaction that he would be able to read.

She went to inspect the breakfast tray and, scavenging, found half a piece of toast he'd spared. Famished, she bit into it. "I must order you a breakfast now," she said, "and eat it as heartlessly as you ate mine."

"Bitterblue," he began. "That Graceling you parted ways with outside the castle. That splendid fellow with the muscles and the Lienid gold—"

She spun back to face him, understanding quite well what he was implying, appalled at the range of his Grace, and furious, because this was not a nonaggressive question. "Po," she snapped, "I advise you to abandon that tack and try a different approach altogether. Why don't you tell me the news from Nander?"

He set his mouth, not pleased. "King Drowden is deposed," he said.

"What?" squawked Bitterblue. "Deposed?"

"There was a siege," Po said. "He lives in the dungeons now, with the rats. There's going to be a trial."

"But why have I received no messenger?"

"Because I'm your messenger. Giddon and I came straight to you the moment things stabilized. We rode eighteen hours every day and changed horses more often than we ate. Just imagine my gratification when we rode in, on the verge of collapse, and then I got to stay up all night, wondering where the seas you'd gotten to and whether I should be raising the alarm and how I was going to explain your disappearance to Katsa."

"What's happening in Nander? Who's ruling?"

"A committee of Council members."

The Council was the name for the undercover association of Katsa and Po, Giddon and Prince Raffin, and all their secret friends devoted to organized mayhem. Katsa had started it years ago, to stop the world's worst kings from bullying their own people. "The Council is ruling Nander?"

"Everyone on the committee is a Nanderan lord or lady who played some role in Drowden's overthrow. When we left, the committee was electing its leaders. Oll is keeping a close watch on things, but it seems to me—and Giddon agrees—that for the moment, this committee is the least disastrous option while all of Nander sorts out how to proceed. There was some talk of plopping Drowden's closest relative straight onto the throne—Drowden has no heir, but his younger half brother is a sensible man and a long standing Council ally—but there's a lot of outrage among the lords who want Drowden back—emotions are high, as I'm sure you can imagine. On the morning of our departure, Giddon and I broke up a fistfight, ate breakfast, broke up a swordfight, and got on our horses." He rubbed his eyes. "No one is safe as King of Nander right now."

"Seas, Po. You must be tired."

"Yes," Po said. "I came here for a vacation. It's been lovely."

Bitterblue smiled. "When is Katsa coming?"

"She doesn't know. No doubt she'll come flying in just when we've given her up. She's managed Estill, Sunder, and Wester practically on her own, you know, while the rest of us were in Nander. I long for a few days of quiet with her before we overthrow the next monarch."

"You're not doing it again!"

"Well," he said, closing his eyes, leaning back against the wall. "It was a joke, I think."

"You think?"

"Nothing is certain," said Po with maddening vagueness, then opened his eyes and squinted at her. "Have you been having any problems?"

Bitterblue snorted. "Could you be any less specific?"

"I mean, things like challenges to your sovereignty."

"Po! Your next revolution isn't going to be here!"

"Of course not! How can you even ask that?"

"Do you realize how opaque you're being?"

"Well, what about unexplained attacks?" he said. "Have there been any of those?"

"Po," she said firmly, fighting against the memory of Teddy so that Po would not see it; crossing her arms, as if that would help her defend her thoughts. "Either tell me what on earth you're talking about, or get out of the range of my thinking."

"I'm sorry," he said, raising a hand in apology. "I'm tired and I'm mucking things up. We've got two separate worries on your account, see. One is that news of the recent events in Nander has been stirring up a lot of discontent everywhere, but especially in kingdoms with a history of tyrannous kings. And so we worry that you're perhaps at greater risk than you were before of one of your own people, maybe someone injured by Leck, trying to hurt you. The other is that the kings of Wester, Sunder, and Estill hate the Council. For all our secrecy, they know who its ringleaders are, Cousin. They'd love to strike us a blow—which they could do in any number of ways, including hurting our friends."

"I see," Bitterblue said, suddenly uncomfortable, and trying to remember the details of the attack on Teddy without linking them to Po in her mind. Was there any chance that the knife that had stabbed Teddy had been meant for her? She couldn't remember the particulars clearly enough to know. It would mean, of course, that someone in the city knew who she was. It seemed unlikely.

"No one has hurt me," she said.

"I'm relieved," he said, a bit doubtfully, then paused. "Is something wrong?"

Bitterblue let out a breath. "A number of things have seemed wrong in the past two weeks," she admitted. "Mostly small things, like a bit of confusion over some of the castle records. No doubt it's nothing."

"Let me know if I can help you," he said, "in any way."

"Thank you, Po. It's lovely to see you, you know."

He stood, gold flashing. Such a beautiful man, with those eyes that glowed with his Grace, and with the feeling in his face that he was never good at hiding. Coming to her, he took her hand, bowed his dark head over it, and kissed it. "I've missed you, Beetle."

"My advisers think we should marry," said Bitterblue wickedly.

Po shouted a laugh. "I shall enjoy explaining that one to Katsa."

"Po," she said. "Please don't tell Helda I was gone."

"Bitterblue," he said, still holding her hand, tugging on it. "Should I be worried?"

"You've got the wrong idea about that Graceling. Forget it, Po. Get some sleep."

Po gazed, or seemed to gaze, into her hand for a moment, sighing. Then he kissed it again and said, "I won't tell her about it today."

"Po—"

"Don't ask me to lie to you, Bitterblue. Just now, this is all I can promise."

"ARE YOU HAPPY that your cousin has arrived, Lady Queen?" asked Helda that morning, peering at Bitterblue, who'd just entered the sitting room bathed and dressed for the day.

"Yes," Bitterblue said, blinking through bloodshot eyes. "Of course."

"So am I," said Helda smartly, in a way that made Bitterblue obscurely uneasy about her late-night secrets. It also took away her courage to ask for any breakfast, seeing as she was supposed to have already eaten.

"The queen will have no fluffy morning bread," she muttered, sighing.

When she entered the lower offices, through which she had to pass to get to her tower, dozens of men milled around or scribbled at desks, poring over long, tiresome-looking documents, their faces blank and bored. Four of her Graceling guards, sitting against the wall, lifted unmatching eyes to her. The Queen's Guard, who numbered eight, had been Leck's guard too. All were Graced with hand-fighting or swordplay, strength, or some other skill befitting the protector of a queen, and it was their job to guard the offices and tower. Holt, one of the four on duty just now, studied her expectantly. Bitterblue made a mental note not to seem annoyed with anyone.

Her adviser Rood was also present, happily recovered, at last, from his nervous episode. "Good morning, Lady Queen," he said timidly. "Can I do anything for you, Lady Queen?"

Rood looked not like his elder brother Runnemood but like Runnemood's shadow, faded and old, as if, were he poked with something sharp, he would pop, and vanish. "Yes, Rood," she said. "I'd love some bacon. Could someone arrange for some bacon and eggs and sausages? How are you?"

"A shipment of silver being transported from the silver docks to the royal treasury at seven o'clock this morning was pilfered, Lady Queen," said Rood. "The loss was only a pittance, but it seems to have disappeared while the cart was in transit, and of course, we are both mystified and concerned."

"Inexplicable," Bitterblue said dryly. She had parted ways with Sapphire well before seven that morning, but she hadn't expected that he'd be out thieving with Teddy's condition so serious. "Had that particular silver ever been stolen before?"

"Forgive me, Lady Queen, but I don't follow. What are you asking?"

"To be honest, I couldn't say."

"Lady Queen!" said Darby, appearing before her out of nowhere. "Lord Danzhol is waiting above. Thiel will attend the meeting with you."

Danzhol. The one with the marriage proposal and the objections to the town charter in central Monsea. "Bacon," Bitterblue muttered. "Bacon!" she repeated, then carefully made her way up the spiral stairs.

GRANTING CHARTERS OF independence to towns like Danzhol's had been the idea of Bitterblue's advisers, and King Ror had agreed. During Leck's time, more than a few lords and ladies of Monsea had behaved badly. It was hard to know which had acted under Leck's influence, and which had acted out of pure clear-headedness, seeing how much they stood to gain from calculated exploitation while the rest of the kingdom was distracted. But it was apparent, when King Ror visited a few nearby estates, that there were lords and ladies who had set themselves up as kings, taxing and legislating their people unwisely, often cruelly.

How forward-thinking, then, to reward every victimized town with freedom and self-governance? Of course, an application for independence required motivation and organization on the part of a town's residents—not to mention literacy—and lords and ladies were allowed to object. They hardly ever did, though. Not many people seemed keen on the court poking too hard at past behavior.

Lord Danzhol was a man in his forties with a wide-mouthed face and clothing that sat strangely on his form, too big in the shoulders, so that his neck seemed to be emerging from a cave; too tight around the middle. He had one silver eye and the other pale green.

"Your citizens claim that you starved them with your taxes during Leck's reign," Bitterblue said, pointing to the relevant passages in the charter, "absconding with their property if they couldn't pay. Their books, the products of their trade, ink, paper, even farm animals. It's hinted here that you had, and still have, a gambling problem."

"I don't see how my personal habits come into it," Danzhol said pleasantly, arms hanging awkwardly from the broad shoulders of his coat, as if they were new arms and he hadn't gotten used to them yet. "Believe me, Lady Queen, I know the people who've drawn up this charter and the ones who've been elected to serve on the town council. They won't be able to keep order."

"Perhaps not," Bitterblue said, "but they're allowed a trial period to prove otherwise. I see here that since my reign began, you've eased back on taxes, only to default on a number of loans to businesses in your town. Don't you have farms and artisans? Isn't your estate prosperous enough to keep you moneyed, Lord Danzhol?"

"Have you noticed that I'm Graced, Lady Queen?" asked Danzhol. "I can open my mouth as wide as my head. Would you like to see?"

Danzhol's lips parted and began to stretch open, his teeth drawing back. His eyes and nose slid to the back of his head and his tongue flopped out—then his epiglottis, taut and red, and none of it stopping, only becoming more stretched, more red, more open and flopping. Finally, his face was all glistening viscera. It was as if he'd turned his head inside out.

Bitterblue pushed against the back of her chair, trying to get away, her own mouth ajar with mingled fascination and horror. Beside her, Thiel scowled in the most supreme annoyance. And then in one smooth motion, Danzhol's teeth swung over again, closing, pulling the rest of his face back into position.

He smiled and gave her a cheeky twitch of the eyebrows, which was almost too much for Bitterblue. "Lady Queen," he said cheerfully, "I would revoke my each and every objection to the charter if you would consent to marry me."

"I'm told you have wealthy relations," said Bitterblue, pretending not to be rattled. "Your family won't lend you any more money, am I right? Perhaps there's talk of debtor's prison? Your only true objection to this charter is that you're bankrupt and you need a town to overtax, or, preferably, a rich wife."

Something nasty flickered across Danzhol's face. He did not seem entirely balanced, this man, and Bitterblue found herself wanting to get him out of her office.

"Lady Queen," he said, "I don't believe you're giving my objections—or my proposal—the proper consideration."

"You're lucky I'm not giving this entire matter closer consideration," said Bitterblue. "I might ask for the details of how you spent these people's money while they were starving, or what you did with the books and farm animals you took from them."

"Ah," he said, smiling again, "but I know that you won't. A town charter is a guarantee of the queen's considerate inattention. Ask Thiel."

At her side, Thiel turned the charter to its signature page and thrust a pen into Bitterblue's hand. "Just sign, Lady Queen," he said, "and we'll get this boor out of here. This meeting was a bad idea."

"Yes," Bitterblue said, grasping the pen, barely noticing it. "A town charter is most certainly no such guarantee," she added, to Danzhol. "I can order an investigation of any lord I wish."

"And how many have you ordered, Lady Queen?"

Bitterblue hadn't ordered any investigations. The appropriate circumstances had never arisen before and it wasn't a forward-thinking thing to do; her advisers had never suggested it. "I don't think we need an investigation, Lady Queen," said Thiel, "to determine that Lord Danzhol is unfit to govern this town. It's my advice that you sign."

Danzhol smiled, bright and toothy. "Are you quite dead set against marrying me, then, Lady Queen?"

Bitterblue plunked her pen down onto her desk, not signing. "Thiel," she said, "take this unhinged man out of my office."

"Lady Queen," Thiel began—then stopped as Danzhol swung out with a dagger he'd pulled from nowhere, slamming Thiel on the head with its hilt. Thiel's eyes rolled up. He toppled to the floor.

Bitterblue sprang to her feet, too amazed at first to think or speak or do anything but gape in astonishment. Before she could collect herself, Danzhol had reached across the desk, grabbed the back of her neck, yanked her forward, opened his mouth, and begun to kiss her. It was awkward positioning, but she fought him, truly frightened now, pushing at his eyes and his face, wrestling his iron-strong arms, finally crawling onto the desk and kneeing him. His stomach was hard and didn't give at all. Po! she cried, for it was possible to get his attention if he was in range. Po, are you awake? She reached for the knife in her boot but Danzhol dragged her off the desk and pulled her against him, twisting her back to his front, holding his dagger to her throat.

"Scream and I'll kill you," he said.

She couldn't have screamed, not with her head jerked back as it was. The pins in her hair pulled and cut at her scalp. "Do you imagine," she choked out, "that this is the way to get what you want?"

"Oh, I'll never have what I want. And the marital approach seemed not to be working," he said, one of his hands raking her arms and chest, hips and thighs for weapons, which set her ablaze with indignation and made her hate him, truly hate him. His chest and stomach were strange and bulky against her back.

"And you think that killing the queen will work?" she said. "You won't even make it out of this tower." Po. Po!

"I'm not going to kill you, unless I have to," he said, dragging her easily across the room to the northernmost window, pressing his knife so hard against her throat that she daren't even squirm, then struggling one-handed with his coat in some awkward manner that she couldn't see but that resulted in a bunched-up pile of rope, attached to a grappling hook, clattering to the floor around his feet. "My plan is to kidnap you," he said, pulling her closer, his body soft and human-feeling now. "There are people who would pay a fortune for you."

"Who are you working for?" she cried. "Who are you doing this for?"

"Not for myself," he said. "Not for you. Not for anyone alive!"

"You're mad," she gasped.

"Am I?" he said, almost conversationally. "Yes, I probably am. But I did it to save myself. The others don't know that it made me mad. If they knew, they wouldn't let me near you. I saw them!" he cried out. "I saw!"

"You saw what?" she said, tears running down her face. "What did you see? What are you talking about? Let me go!" The rope was knotted at regular intervals. Bitterblue began to understand what he was doing, and with her comprehension came the sheerest, blankest refusal. Po! "There are guards on the grounds," she said. "You will not get me past them."

"I have a boat on the river, and some friends. One of them is.

Graced with disguise—we slipped right by the river guards. I think she'll impress you, Lady Queen, even if I haven't."

Po! "You won't—"

"Shut your mouth," he said with a press of the dagger that effectively made his point. "You talk too much. And stop moving around." He was having some trouble with the grappling hook. It was too small for the sill and kept clunking to the stone floor. He sweated and yammered to himself, shaking a bit, his breath rasping and uneven. Bitterblue knew, with a fundamental, unshakable sort of knowledge, that she was not capable of stepping with this man out of the kingdom's highest window onto a badly attached rope. If Danzhol wanted her to leave by this window, he was going to have to throw her out of it.

She tried Po one last, hopeless time. Then, when Danzhol dropped the hook again, she took advantage of his need to bend down to attempt something desperate. Lifting one foot up, reaching one hand down—crying out, as she had to push her throat right into the dagger in order to reach—she groped for the tiny knife in her boot. Finding it, she jabbed backward, stabbing Danzhol in the shin as hard as she could.

He yelled out in pain and fury and loosened his hold on her, just enough for Bitterblue to spin around. She plunged the knife into his chest as Katsa had taught her, under the breastbone and up with all her strength. It was horrible going in, unimaginably horrible; he was too solid and giving, too real, and suddenly too heavy. Blood ran down her hands. She pushed hard at his weight. He crashed to the floor.

A moment passed.

Then footsteps thundered on the stair and Po exploded into the room, others behind him. Bitterblue was in his arms but didn't feel it; he asked questions she couldn't comprehend, but she must have opened the answers to him, because barely a moment had passed before he'd let her go, attached Danzhol's hook to the sill, flung the rope out the window, and flung himself out after it.

She couldn't stop looking at Danzhol's body. She found herself against the opposite wall, vomiting. Someone kind was holding her hair out of the way. She heard the rumble of the person's voice above her. It was Lord Giddon, the Middluns lord, Po's traveling companion. She began to cry.

"There," Giddon said quietly. "That's all right." She tried to wipe her tears but saw that her hands were covered with blood; she turned to the wall and was sick again. "Bring me some of that water," she heard Giddon say, then felt him cleaning her hands with a dripping wet cloth.

There were so many people in this room. Every one of her advisers was here, and ministers and clerks, and her Graced guards kept jumping out the window, which made her dizzy. Thiel sat up, moaning. Rood knelt beside him, holding something to Thiel's head. Her guard Holt stood nearby, watching her, worry flickering in his silver-gray eyes. Then, suddenly, Helda was there, enfolding Bitterblue into her arms, soft and warm. And then, the most amazing thing yet, Thiel came to her and fell on his knees before her, taking her hands, holding them to his face. In his eyes, she saw something naked and broken that she didn't understand.

"Lady Queen," he said, his voice shaking. "If that man has hurt you, I will never forgive myself."

"Thiel," she said. "He didn't hurt me. He hurt you much more. You should lie down." She began to shiver. It was terribly cold in here.

Thiel stood and, still holding her hands, said calmly to Helda, Giddon, and Holt, "The queen has had a shock. She must go to bed and rest as long as she needs to. A healer must come and tend her cuts and brew an infusion of lorassim tea, which will calm her shivers and replace some of the water she's lost. Do you follow?"

Everyone followed. It was done as Thiel said.

7

BITTERBLUE LAY UNDER blankets, shivering and too tired to sleep. Her mind would not be still. She pulled at the embroidered edge of her bedsheet. Ashen had always been embroidering, endlessly embroidering the edges of sheets and pillow-casings with these cheerful little pictures, boats and castles and mountains, compasses and anchors and falling stars. Her fingers flying. It was not a happy memory.

She threw her sheets off and went to Ashen's chest. Kneeling before it, she placed her palms on its dark wooden lid, its top carved with rows and rows of precious decorations very like those Ashen had liked to embroider. Stars and suns, castles and flowers, keys, snowflakes, boats, fish. She had a memory of having liked this when she was little: the way Ashen's embroidery matched parts of Ashen's chest.

Like puzzle pieces fitting together, she thought. Like things that make sense. What's wrong with me?

She found a roomy red robe that matched her carpet and her bedroom walls, then challenged herself, for no reason she could have explained, to go to the window and look down at the river. She'd climbed out a window before with Ashen. It might even have been this window. And there hadn't been a rope that time, just sheets knotted together. On the grounds, Ashen had killed a guard with a knife. She'd had to. The guard would never have let them pass. Ashen had snuck up on him and stabbed him from behind.

I had to kill him, Bitterblue thought.

Looking out, she saw Po in the castle's back garden far below, leaning on the wall with his head in his hands.

Bitterblue went to her bed and laid herself down, touching her face to Ashen's sheets. After a moment, she rose, dressed in a plain green gown, and strapped her knives to her forearms. Then she went out to find Helda.

HELDA SAT IN a plush blue chair in Bitterblue's sitting room, pushing needle through fabric that was the color of the moon. "You're meant to be sleeping, Lady Queen," she said, peering at Bitterblue worriedly. "Was that not working for you?"

Bitterblue wandered from place to place in the room, touching her fingertips to the vacant bookshelves, not certain what she was looking for, but at any rate, finding no dust. "I can't sleep. I'll go mad if I keep trying."

"Are you hungry?" asked Helda. "We've had a delivery of some breakfast things. Rood came, pushing the cart himself, and insisted you would want it. I couldn't turn him away. He seemed so desperate to do something to comfort you."

BACON IMPROVED THINGS dramatically. But she was still too scattered for sleep.

A never-used spiral staircase near her rooms wound down to a small door guarded by a member of the Monsean Guard. The door opened to the castle's back garden.

When had she last visited this garden? Had she been here even once since Leck's cages had been removed? Stepping into the garden now, she came face-to-face with a sculpture of a creature that seemed to be a woman, with a woman's hands, face, body, but that had the claws, teeth, ears, the posture almost, of a mountain lion rearing on its hind legs. Bitterblue stared into the woman's eyes, which were vital and frightened—not blank, the way she might have expected a sculpture's eyes to be. The woman screamed. There was a tension in her stance, an out-throwing of arms and a curvature of spine and neck, that somehow created the impression of tremendous physical pain. A living vine with golden flowers wrapped around one hind leg tightly, seeming to tether her to her pedestal. She's a woman turning into a mountain lion, Bitterblue thought, and it hurts, horribly.

High shrubbery walls on either side enclosed the garden, which was unruly with trees and vines, flowers. The ground sloped down to the low stone wall that fronted the river. Po still stood there, elbows propped, eyes staring—or seeming to stare—at the longlegged birds that preened themselves on the pilings.

As she walked toward him, he dropped his head into his hands again. She understood. Po was never particularly hard to read.

The very day that Bitterblue had lost her mother, this man, this cousin, had found Bitterblue. In the hollow of a fallen tree trunk, he'd found her. He'd carried her to safety, running full-tilt through the forest with her tipped over his shoulder. He'd tried to kill her father for her, failed, nearly died, and that was how he'd lost his sight. Trying to protect her.

"Po," she said softly, coming to stand beside him. "It's not your fault, you know."

Po took a breath, let it go. "Are you always armed?" he asked, his voice quiet.

"Yes. I wear a knife in my boot."

"And when you sleep?"

"I sleep with knives strapped to my forearms."

"And do you ever come home and sleep in your own bed?"

"Always," she said a bit sourly, "except last night. Not that it's any of your business."

"Would you consider wearing the arm holsters during the day always, as you're doing now?"

"Yes," she said, "and anyway, why must it all be hidden? If men are to attack me in my own office, why shouldn't I wear a sword?"

"You're right. You should wear a sword. Are you out of practice?"

She hadn't had a moment to pick up a sword in the last—she calculated—three or four years. "Very."

"I or Giddon or one of your guards will train with you. And all such visitors will be searched from now on. I crossed paths briefly with Thiel just now and found him consumed with his concern for you; he hates himself, Cousin, for not having had Danzhol searched. Your guards did manage to catch two of the accomplices, but neither accomplice could tell me whom Danzhol was planning to ransom you to. I'm afraid the other accomplice, a girl, got away. This girl, Bitterblue—she could do some extensive damage if she wanted to, and I don't even know how to advise you to watch out for her. She's Graced with—I guess you could call it hiding."

"Danzhol mentioned someone Graced with disguise."

"Well, from what I gather, you'd be impressed with the way she'd hidden the boat. It was all rigged up to look like a big, leafy, floating tree branch. Or so I understand. It involved mirrors, and I wish I could've seen the effect myself. When we got closer and your guards recognized it for a boat, they were quite bowled over, and thought I was some kind of genius, of course, for marching straight up to it with no confusion whatsoever. I left them to chase after the two Ungraced fellows and I went after her, and I tell you, Bitterblue, what she could do was not normal. I was chasing her up the riverbank, I felt her directly in front of me, and I sensed her planning to hide from me, and then all at once, we reached a pier and she jumped up onto it, lay down, and expected me to mistake her for a pile of canvas."

"What?" Bitterblue said, scrunching her nose at him. "What does that even mean?"

"She believed herself to be hiding from me," Po repeated, "in the guise of a pile of canvas. I stopped, knowing I was supposed to seem fooled, but confused, because I wasn't fooled. There was no canvas at all! So I went to a couple of men on the pier and asked them if they could see any canvas nearby, and if so, please not to stare at it or point at it in a demonstrative manner."

"You said that to strangers?"

"Yes," said Po. "They thought I was completely barmy."

"Well, of course they did!"

"Then they told me that yes, there was a pile of canvas right where I knew her to be, gray and red, which I'm told were the colors she'd been wearing. I had to leave her there, which killed me, but I'd already made enough of a scene, and anyway, I needed to get back and see how you were. Do you know, she even felt a bit like canvas to me? Isn't that wild? Isn't it marvelous?"

"No, it isn't marvelous! She could be in this garden this very minute. She could be this wall we're leaning on!"

"Oh, she isn't," Po said. "She isn't anywhere in the castle, I assure you. I wish she were—I want to meet her. She didn't feel malevolent to me, you know. She felt quite sorry about the whole thing."

"Po. She tried to kidnap me!"

"But she felt as if she were friends with your guard Holt," said Po. "I'll try to find her. Maybe she can tell us what Danzhol was up to."

"But Po, what about the scene you made? And what about my guards who saw you unfazed by the boat? Are you sure no one was suspicious of you?"

The question seemed to subdue him. "I'm sure. They only thought I was peculiar."

"I don't suppose there's any point in asking you to be more careful."

He closed his eyes. "It's been so long since I've had a break from society. I'd love to go home for a bit." Rubbing his temples, he said, "The man you were with this morning, the Lienid who wasn't born a Lienid . . ."

Bitterblue bristled. "Po—"

"I know," he said. "Sweetheart, I know, and I've only got an innocent question. What's his Grace?"

Bitterblue snorted. "He says he doesn't know."

"A likely story."

"Could you tell anything about it from the feel of him?"

Po paused, considering, then shook his head. "There's a certain feeling to a mind reader, and he didn't have it. But I did feel something unusual about him. Something about his mind, you understand, that I don't feel with cooks or dancers, or your guard, or Katsa. He may have some mental power."

"Could he be prescient?"

"I don't know. I met a woman in Nander who calls birds with her mind, and calms them. Your friend—he's called Saf, is he?—Saf felt a bit like that woman, but not exactly."

"Could he have a malevolent power like Leck's?"

Po let out an explosive breath of air. "I've never encountered anyone with a mind like Leck's. We must hope I never do." He shifted position and changed his tone. "Introduce me to Saf, why don't you, and I'll ask him what his Grace is."

"Oh, certainly, why not? They wouldn't think it at all strange if I showed up with a Lienid prince in tow."

"So, he doesn't know who you are? I wondered."

"I suppose you're going to lecture me now about telling lies."

He began to laugh, which confused her at first, until she remembered to whom she was speaking. "Yes," she said, "all right. How did you explain your mad rush to my office today, by the way? The spy excuse?"

"Naturally. Spies are always telling me things in the strictest confidence at exactly the last moment."

She giggled. "Oh, but it's awful, isn't it, Po, so much lying? Especially to people who trust you."

He didn't answer this and turned back to the wall, the humor still in his face, but something else there too, that silenced her, and made her wish she hadn't been so flip. Po's particular web of lies was not, in fact, very funny. And the longer it went on—the more Council work Po did—the more people who gained his trust—the less funny it became. The lie he told when pressed to explain his inability to read—that an illness had damaged his close vision—stretched credibility and occasionally raised eyebrows. Bitterblue didn't like to imagine what would happen if the truth were to come out. Bad enough that he was a mind reader, but a mind reader who'd been lying about it for more than twenty years and who was admired and praised all seven kingdoms over? In Lienid, flatly revered? And what of his closest friends who didn't know? Katsa did, and Raffin, and Raffin's companion, Bann; Po's mother, and Po's grandfather. That was all. Giddon didn't know, nor did Helda. Nor did Po's father and brothers. Skye didn't know, and Skye adored his younger brother.

Bitterblue didn't like to think how Katsa would react if people began to be vicious to Po. She thought that Katsa's ferocity in his defense might be frightening.

"I'm sorry I couldn't spare you having to do what you did today, Beetle," Po said.

"There's nothing to forgive. I managed, didn't I?"

"More than that. You were marvelous."

He was so like her mother in profile. Ashen had had that straight nose, that promise around the mouth of a quick smile. His accent was like Ashen's, and so was the fierce, loyal feeling of him. Perhaps it had made sense that Po and Katsa had dropped into her life just when her mother was torn out of it. Not justice, but sense. "I did as Katsa taught me," she said quietly.

He reached his arm out and pulled her in, hugging her tight, centering her around herself again with his embrace.

BITTERBLUE WENT NEXT to the infirmary to find out about Teddy.

Madlen was snoring fit to drown out an invasion of geese, but when Bitterblue pushed the door open, she sat bolt upright in bed. "Lady Queen," she said hoarsely, blinking. "Teddy's holding on."

Bitterblue fell into a chair, then pulled her knees up, and hugged her legs hard. "Do you think he'll live?"

"I think it's highly possible, Lady Queen."

"Did you give them all the medicines they need?"

"All I had, Lady Queen, and I can give you more for them."

"And did you . . ." Bitterblue wasn't sure how to ask this. "Did you see anything . . . odd while you were there, Madlen?"

Madlen didn't seem surprised by the question, though she peered at Bitterblue keenly, from Bitterblue's sloppy, knotted hair all the way to her boots, before answering. "Yes," she said. "There were some strange things said and done."

"Tell me," Bitterblue said, "everything. I want to know it all, strange or not."

"Well," Madlen said, "where to begin? I suppose the strangest thing was the excursion they made after Sapphire got back from walking you home. He came into the room rather obviously happy about something, Lady Queen, shooting significant looks at Bren and Tilda—"

"Bren?"

"Bren. Sapphire's sister, Lady Queen."

"And Tilda is Teddy's?"

"I'm sorry, Lady Queen—I assumed—"

"Assume I know nothing," said Bitterblue.

"Well," said Madlen, "yes. They are two brother-sister pairs. Teddy and Sapphire live in the rooms behind the shop, where we were, and Tilda and Bren in the apartments above. The women are older and have lived together for some time, Lady Queen. Tilda seems to be the owner proper of the printing shop, but she told me that she and Bren are teachers."

"Teachers! What kind?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say, Lady Queen," said Madlen. "The kind who would slip into the shop with Sapphire, shut the door, have a muttered conversation that I can't hear, then leave me alone with their half-dead friend without telling me."

"So, you were in their house, alone," said Bitterblue, sitting up straight.

"Teddy woke up, Lady Queen, so I went into the shop to let them know the good news. That's when I discovered they'd gone."

"What a shame Teddy woke before you knew you were alone," exclaimed Bitterblue. "You could have gone through all their things and found the answers to so many questions."

"Hm," said Madlen wryly. "That's not generally my first line of action when left alone in a stranger's home with a sleeping patient. Anyway, Lady Queen, you'll be glad Teddy woke, because he was quite forthcoming."

"Really!"

"Have you seen his arms, Lady Queen?"

Teddy's arms? She'd seen Saf's arms; Saf had had Lienid markings on his upper arms like the ones Po had. Less ornate than Po's, though no less effective at drawing the eye. And no less attractive. More, she thought sternly, just in case Po was awake and having his ego stroked. "What about Teddy's arms?" she asked, rubbing her eyes, sighing.

"He has scars on one arm, Lady Queen. They've the look of burns—as if he's been branded. I asked him how it happened, and he said it was the press. He'd been trying to wake his parents, he said, and failed, and fell asleep himself, lying against the printing press, until Tilda dragged him out. It didn't sound like anything sensical to me, Lady Queen, so I asked him if his parents had had a printing shop that had burned. He began to giggle—he was drugged, you understand, Lady Queen, and perhaps saying more than he would otherwise, and making less sense—and told me that his parents had had four printing shops that had burned."

"Four! Was he hallucinating?"

"I can't be certain, Lady Queen, but when I challenged him, he was adamant that they'd had four shops, and that one after another, they'd burned. I said it seemed a remarkable coincidence, and he said no, it was exactly what was bound to have happened. I asked if his parents were particularly incautious, and he giggled again, and said yes, in Leck City it had been particularly incautious to run a printing shop."

Oh. And now Bitterblue understood the story; she saw the level on which it made perfect sense. "His parents," she said. "Where are they?"

"They died in the fire that scarred him, Lady Queen."

She had known it would be the answer, and still, it was difficult to hear. "When?"

"Oh, ten years ago. He was ten."

My father killed Teddy's parents, thought Bitterblue. I couldn't blame him if he hated me.

"And then," Madlen said, "he said something I could make so little sense of that I wrote it down, Lady Queen, so I wouldn't mix it up when I told you. Where is it?" Madlen asked herself, poking crossly at the mountain of books and papers on her bedside table. She leaned out of bed and grabbed at the discarded clothing on the floor. "Here it is," she said, fishing a folded paper from a pocket and flattening it against the mattress. "He said, 'I suppose the little queen is safe without you today, for her first men can do what you would. Once you learn cutting and stitching, do you ever forget it, whatever comes between? Even if Leck comes between? I worry for her. It's my dream that the queen be a truthseeker, but not if it makes her someone's prey.' "

Madlen stopped reading and looked across at Bitterblue, who stared back at her blankly.

"That's what he said?"

"That's it, as best I could remember, Lady Queen."

"Who are my 'first men'?" Bitterblue asked. "My advisers?" And—prey?

"I've no idea, Lady Queen. Given the context, perhaps your best male healers?"

"It's probably drug-induced nonsense," Bitterblue said. "Let me see it."

Madlen's handwriting was big and careful, like a child's. Bitterblue sat with her legs curled in the chair, puzzling over the message for some time. Cutting and stitching? Did that mean healing work? Or sewing work? Or something terrible, like what her father had used to do to rabbits and mice with knives? It's my dream that the queen be a truthseeker, but not if it makes her someone's prey.

"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 carefully."

"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 Estill. Estill 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, alluding to the fact, during her interview, that in all the seven kingdoms but Lienid and Monsea, and particularly in Estill, 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—well, 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 ally 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. Of 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, mercifully, Po got up to take his leave. Giddon appeared, ravenous, slapping Po on the shoulder, falling 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 forcefully, "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 pillow, 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 pulled 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.