She asked the silbercows about the noises once. But they got so quiet and serious, they said Yes and We know and We’ll tell you. Then they started to show her pictures that she badly did not want to see, pictures of coral and seahorses and silbercows suddenly torn apart, so that she cried out, Never mind.
But you should know, they said.
No. I don’t want to. I’m not interested. I don’t care, she said, and when they kept trying to tell her, she began to sing. Her singing made them dart back. When she got to the end of the song and they gathered around her again slowly, they no longer tried to show her those terrible pictures.
You are definitely not the Keeper, they said, which pleased her.
I told you I wasn’t, she said.
But just because they agreed now that she wasn’t the Keeper, it didn’t mean they understood who she was. In fact, they seemed to spend a lot of time trying to decide amongst themselves who she was. It made her anxious about what they would decide. She wished she knew how to make them go away, and stay away.
* * *
—
One day, the silbercows asked permission to look closer at her treasures.
You can look at them, she said, obscurely nervous. But you can’t have them.
For a while, they poked around among her anchors, nets, and tattered sails. They were very interested in her Storyworld, especially the two rotting corpses inside the cabin. They pointed out that someone, certainly humans, had chopped gashes into the ship’s pale gray hull. They touched some markings on the ship’s side, saying that the markings were a name, but that they didn’t know how to read it. They seemed curious to know who those corpses were, and why they were padlocked inside. They also wanted to know why she was interested in them. Was it because she knew who they were?
The creature responded that she didn’t. She just liked their ship, which was a window into another world. It had fallen down slowly from that world, as if it were looking for her. It was as if the world above had blessed her.
The silbercows asked her if it was possible that she was a kind of keeper, just not the Keeper they’d thought she was. Could she be the keeper of the secrets of humans? The keeper of human sadnesses and failures?
The creature didn’t understand this, at all. She’d never considered humans, beyond that she liked their shiny, perfect, tiny things, she liked being connected to the world above, and she liked watching their flesh melt into bones. Also, her treasures were happy, not sad. I’m the keeper of their things, she said. I love their things.
The silbercows asked her if she understood that her treasures fell from another world because of calamities in that world; that if human things sank to the bottom of the sea, it was because something in the world of humans had gone wrong. We talk to humans sometimes who tell us about it, they said.
You seem to talk to everyone, she said, rather reproachfully.
We don’t talk to all humans, they said. Only the humans who are good listeners. The point is, humans might be able to tell us why there are bodies inside your Storyworld.
The creature was beginning to dislike the conversation again, and wondered why the silbercows were always so gloomy. I would rather talk about how sparkly my ring is, she said, stretching her tentacle out, wondering if she was going to have to start singing again.
But then something happened that changed everything. One of the silbercows, the one who didn’t talk, found the little metal egg with the sparkly circle and pin. He sprang away, shaking. When the others saw it too, they cried out, and sprang back with him.
What? said the sea creature. What is it?
It makes fire, they cried out. It makes the ocean disappear.
That little thing? she said, not believing them.
Something big is trapped inside it, they told her. Poison and horror and pain. It comes out when you pull the ring. It burns! And then they showed her the pictures again that she didn’t want to see, and she started to sing, but the silbercows didn’t go away, they just kept pressing the pictures into her mind. The ocean torn apart with a terrible light. The noise and the shaking, and silbercows crying, and everything gone. Stop, she cried, please.
It’s not safe to keep that thing near you as a treasure, they told her.
Not safe? Should I take it somewhere else? she asked, noticing that, ever so slowly, the silbercows were backing away.
If you do, they told her, wherever you take it won’t be safe.
Should I throw it on land?
No! That could kill humans!
Should I bury it under the ground?
Maybe, they said doubtfully. But what if the water uncovers it again, and someone pulls the ring?
But then what can I do? cried the creature. I have to keep it near me, and guard it! I have to keep it safe!
The silbercows, who were still backing away, told her that it could never be safe. Then they told her that they had to go away now, because they couldn’t be near it.
Then, to her amazement, they turned and fled.
* * *
—
Finally, the creature had what she wanted. Solitude.
The ocean floor spread out around her, quiet and dark, and life was how it had used to be.
Except now, when the creature held her Storyworld to one of her eyes and looked inside it, she remembered that the silbercows had wanted to talk about who the two bodies were. Why they were there. The creature still didn’t want to know those things. But it had changed her Storyworld, that there were stories connected to it that she didn’t know.
And when she lifted her ringed tentacle to the brighter water above, admiring its sparkle, she missed the silbercows trying to press upon her the story of the sad human who’d lost it. When someone tried to press a story on you, you needed to be able to refuse. But it was also nice to know that the story would be there again for you another day, if you changed your mind. If you were ready.
The creature was lonely, for the first time.
She began to play games in her mind, invent fantasies, of ways to make the scary egg treasure go away, so that the silbercows could come back. Not come back often, but visit sometimes.
Eventually her fantasies turned into ideas, which she studied and revised, until one day, her ideas became a plan.
On that day, the creature began to push one of her tentacles—not the ringed tentacle—into the sand beneath her body. With all her strength, she pushed down, drilling a deep, thin tunnel in the ocean floor. She drove her tentacle into the ground as deep as it could go, surprised by how hard it was inside the earth, how cold. At the bottom of her tunnel, with her tentacle fully extended, she scraped out a little well.
Then, ever so carefully, she pulled her tentacle back out again. She picked up the scary egg treasure. She lowered it through the tunnel and placed it into the well.
Then, her tentacle plugging the tunnel, she pulled the ring.
* * *
—
The pain was terrible.
The pain was so terrible that when the silbercows arrived, flying toward her with big, alarmed eyes, she told them that she thought she might be dying.
What did you do? they asked her. We heard the big noise. We felt the ocean shake. You don’t look like you’re dying. What did you do?
I buried the treasure in the ground beneath me, she told them, and pulled the ring.
The silbercows were boggled by this. They stared at her, blinking, then they stared at one another and talked amongst themselves. They told her that she was a hero.
I’m not, she said, crying from the pain in the place where a horrible poisonous fire had burned away her tentacle. She was really quite sure she was dying. She didn’t want to live.
Maybe you’re the Keeper after all, they said.
No! she said, unable to bear this. Not that again! I was just lonely! And then
she began to cry. Her crying turned into a song of loneliness, sadness, and loss, because she’d lost her tentacle. She’d hurt herself, to make her home safe for the silbercows, and now they were misunderstanding her again. She sang louder and louder. Her singing turned into a wail.
The silbercows didn’t leave. They stayed with her while she sang and wailed, watching her quietly, waiting. They flinched sometimes at the noises she made, but they didn’t leave.
When she was done, they carefully examined her tentacle with their noses, which were soft. It wasn’t a tentacle anymore, really, they told her. It was a black, burnt nub.
Will it ever stop burning? she asked.
We don’t know, they said.
I’m uneven now, she said. My body is uneven.
Yes, they said, touching her gently, touching their noses to her nub. We’re uneven too.
Do your wounds still hurt?
Much less, they said.
Am I dying?
We think you’re going to live.
The creature found that she was relieved to hear this. She thought that she would like to live at least long enough to see if her wound could ever hurt less.
Listen, she said, because something else was hurting her. Will you tell me . . . She paused. Briefly sang a few notes for courage. Will you tell me why the humans would make a thing like that?
Chapter Ten
A blade of light woke Giddon, blinding him, then dragging him into a consciousness he did not want.
Everything hurt, especially his neck, especially his hands and feet. They’d had to drag him out of the frozen sea yesterday like a drowning dog; they’d had to go through an entire rigmarole to warm him, for he’d made himself sick, trying to find her even if it killed him. Hava’s face had been tight and scared with worry for him when they’d pulled him back aboard. He was supposed to be taking care of Hava, and instead he’d given her something else to fear.
“Bitterblue,” he said. “Bitterblue.” Then he wept, as he hadn’t been able to yesterday, desperately, like a man who was choking, pressing his face into pillows so that his neighbors wouldn’t hear.
* * *
—
When Giddon began to understand, with some alarm, that his cistern of tears was bottomless, he forced himself to sit up and calm down. This had never happened before, that he hadn’t been able to cry himself out. A new discovery about himself that he’d have to learn to manage.
Bitterblue, he said. I’ve mucked it up already, without you. You would not be proud.
Except that he knew she would be proud, always, whether he deserved it or not.
Tears began to trickle again. He cleared his throat, wiped his face, and took a breath.
All right, he said. Tell me what to do.
The answer came in her clear voice. Make sure Katu is safe. Take care of my sister. Write to my uncle and our friends and tell them what happened to me. Keep an eye on my advisers. And find out about Mikka and Brek: Investigate those importers.
The family names on the importer list had included Cavenda, Tima, Balava. There had been people with those names at dinner last night.
Giddon was going to kill the importers.
He reached for his clothes.
* * *
—
By the time Giddon stepped out of his bedroom, he had his face in order.
He was on the second floor of Quona Varana’s tall, many-windowed house above the sea. Light streamed into the corridor from the gigantic stairway at the far end, where the walls were made of windows. The light was an assault.
A straight-backed, bearded man in white stood in the corridor and nodded a greeting as Giddon approached. His skin was brown but his hair and eyes, his beard, were the same dark shade as Giddon’s.
“Breakfast is served in the dining room downstairs, sir,” he said in Keepish.
“Thank you,” Giddon replied in Keepish, pausing to knock on Hava’s door. She’d skipped that interminable dinner last night. Refused to leave the ship, then kept turning into a sculpture anytime anyone tried to talk to her. So they’d left her behind with the sailors, then Giddon had returned after dinner to collect her. Once he’d explained that they’d be staying in a quiet, isolated home, then begged, pleaded with her to come, she’d done so, silent and cold, going straight to bed when they’d arrived.
“Hava has already gone to breakfast,” the man said.
“Has she?” said Giddon, worry twisting inside him. “Was she wearing a coat?”
“No, sir,” said the man.
Then maybe she really had gone to breakfast. Though Hava could make a man see a young woman without a coat, if she wanted to.
Giddon walked on quickly toward the staircase. At its top, a cat sat at attention, its rump on the floor, its nose in the air, its white fur, even its posture and gravity, mirroring that of the man in white, almost comically, as if it believed itself to be directing guests to breakfast as well. Then it saw Giddon and darted down the steps in front of him and the illusion was broken. Giddon was comforted, obscurely, by its familiar, catlike behavior.
There had been a few blue foxes at dinner last night—though their fur had been a dark gray, not actually blue—and he hadn’t liked the feeling of their intelligent gold eyes on him, the sense that they might be “bonded” to some person at the party with whom they were having a secret conversation. Of course, everything about dinner last night had been difficult. Giddon had felt as if he were clinging to propriety by a thread; he’d wanted to crawl under the table and roll into a ball.
Through the south-facing windows, he could see the Cliff Farm that, Quona had explained, was owned by the Winterkeep Academy and was used by the school of animal medicine. Its barns, painted pale blue, were perched on a cliff of gold grass above the sea, fat cows grazing idly. Giddon had never seen barns with huge glass windows before. Suddenly he hated the farm, because it was part of an educational institution more successful and blessed with resources than Bitterblue had ever been able to dream of.
His breath whooshed out in relief when he found Hava in the dining room, tearing bacon with her teeth like she was trying to punish it. Her shoulders were hunched, her pale face in a snarl. He sat across from her, not pressing her to speak when she ignored him.
Guide me, he said.
You’re doing fine, Bitterblue said. Just let her be.
* * *
—
Breakfast was overrun by cats.
The meal took place in a beautiful room with tall windows that striped the table with sunlight. The food was good. The tea was delicious. And Giddon had grown up in a castle with dogs; he was friendly with many cats; it didn’t alarm him for something furry to brush past his legs under the table, or for small eyes to watch him from a windowsill. But there were just so many. Two in the room when he arrived, a ginger and a mottled black batting at each other with concerted antagonism that turned suddenly into complete indifference, and their numbers kept growing. By the time Quona Varana came in, at least seven cats were present, and he could hear others scurrying in rooms nearby. One had fallen asleep on Giddon’s foot. This was fine with him.
Quona took each of the visitors’ hands in a quick, firm grasp—first Bitterblue’s advisers Froggatt and Barra; then Coran, who was both an adviser and the queen’s doctor; then Giddon; then Hava. Giddon, who knew handshaking wasn’t a Torlan custom, was so touched by the gesture that he almost started crying again.
“How are you all?” said Quona in stiff but unhesitant Lingian, sitting down, then attacking a hard-boiled egg with a spoon. “Did you sleep? Are you comfortable? I hope you don’t mind the cats.” She was a woman of perhaps forty, with dark hair pulled neatly back and black eyes in a brown face. Her voice was deep and forceful, her focus on them rather startlingly intense. She asked her questions like she had an agenda and was ticking things off a list.
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br /> “I’m quite comfortable, thank you,” said Giddon, “and I like cats.”
“Good,” she said, eating quietly for a minute or two. Occasionally a cat jumped into her lap and she swept it onto the floor again with a quick remonstrance in Keepish. “Bad cat!” or “Behave yourself!”
“Do you have any foxes?” asked Giddon, wanting to know if he needed to guard himself, though unsure against what. Could foxes read everyone’s minds?
“I do not,” said Quona. “Though if I did, I would have only one. There are many laws governing the relationships between humans and foxes, and one is that no human may be bonded to more than one fox. Do you understand about the foxes?”
“About . . . the laws?” said Giddon, confused.
“About how their telepathy works,” she said. “You’ll be encountering foxes during your stay, so it’s important to understand. You don’t need to fear their intrusion, for a fox can’t understand your thoughts or words at all, unless it’s bonded to you. A fox might choose to bond to you in the course of your visit—it’s unlikely, but possible—but if so, the fox will tell you. And then, it’s like human conversation. They’ll know what you tell them, and you’ll know what they tell you. You won’t be able to see into each other’s souls, or any such nonsense, but if you need a letter delivered or want to know if your staff is dawdling, they can be useful. It’s quite straightforward. At least, this is the common knowledge about foxes. None has ever bonded to me, so I can’t speak to how it feels. Do you want one to bond to you?” she asked abruptly.
“Not particularly,” said Giddon.
“Congratulations,” said Quona. “You’re the only person in Winterkeep who doesn’t, perhaps besides me. I prefer my cats. But maybe, as you come to understand the importance of blue foxes here, you’ll change your mind. I’m told they are loyal, obedient, and unbribable by your enemies. If you do change your mind, give them treats. They’re pleasure-seekers.”
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