Winterkeep

by Kristin Cashore

  * * *

  —

  They both slept, for a long time. There was little else to do.

  Then, in the middle of the night, Bitterblue woke to a howling wind.

  What if the chimney gets clogged with snow? she thought to herself. And the smoke backs up into the room? And we can’t escape, because snow is blocking the door? She felt the weight of the hill above, imagined the hill collapsing, dirt clogging her nose and mouth. She imagined dying here, buried inside the ground. Her friends would never find her. They’d never know.

  She threw her blankets off, crossed to the door, and pulled. It crashed open, cold air rushing in. When she stepped out and down, she understood suddenly that the door in the hill was positioned at the hill’s steepest point, and partly up its slope, where snow was unlikely to accumulate. And then she remembered the long chimney, protected from snow by its chimney cap.

  I should trust the locals, she thought, going back inside, shivering, crawling into her bed. Giddon? I’m scared of me dying, or you dying, or Hava dying, now that I’m so close.

  I know, he said. It isn’t going to happen.

  Do you promise?

  Yes, he said. I promise.

  But no one can promise that, she cried, almost triumphantly, as if she’d caught him out in a lie.

  I know, he said. But I’m promising it anyway, and you should believe me. Who’s more trustworthy, me or your anxiety?

  That made Bitterblue laugh a little. And then her mind started playing with ideas of Giddon again. Sitting with him in his chair, pressed against him. Touching his chest. Touching his beard, which was scratchy. Kissing his mouth. Being kissed back.

  Kissing Giddon, Bitterblue fell asleep.

  * * *

  —

  The storm lasted the whole next day and night.

  “The single good thing about it is that my foot is healing,” Bitterblue said grumpily. The hut was beginning to feel like her attic prison all over again. Only her fear of encouraging Lovisa’s gloom kept her from devolving into constant complaints. That and the books, which told amusingly heroic stories about the Keeper and showed pictures of her in many shapes and forms, sometimes with innumerable eyes and arms, sometimes more of a blob.

  Lovisa wasn’t interested in the books, actually scowled when Bitterblue showed her one of the drawings, and hardly spoke. She ate, drank the tiny cups of tea Bitterblue made from melted snow, slept, and stared at the ceiling. “When we get to the town,” she said, “I’m going to send a signal message to the Ledra Magistry. Do you know what that means?”

  “Only vaguely.”

  “It means that soon, all of Winterkeep will know what my parents did.”

  “All of Winterkeep?”

  “Signal messages are passed from station to station. The message is spelled out in flashes of light and every station in range receives it. Then those stations send it along to the stations in their range, and so on. It spreads out like a web. And it isn’t just the stations. Anyone in range who sees the mirrors and knows the signal language will also know. A lot of amateurs keep signal stations and pass things to each other.”

  “I see,” said Bitterblue. “It sounds messy.”

  “Messages do get garbled. We send them twice.”

  “What will you say?”

  “For now, only the things we know for sure. That my parents kidnapped you. That they killed Pari Parnin. That my uncle is missing. And I won’t mention where we are,” Lovisa said shortly, then said little else for the rest of the night. Lovisa could stare at the ceiling for hours, various hard expressions crossing her face. It was obvious she was trying to work out some knot inside herself. Bitterblue wished her well with it, but said nothing, for she had a knot of her own. The knot was in the shape of Giddon.

  And it wasn’t a knot, really. It was an entire neat coil, like the ropes the sailors wound into loops and hung on pegs on the Monsea. It was the stars that wound themselves in ropes around the earth; or seemed to, for really it was the earth that turned, spinning inside the stars’ grasp.

  Bitterblue had been too preoccupied to look at something, so she’d ignored it. While she’d ignored it, it had spun along merrily on its own course. Now she was paying attention. Bitterblue was good at knowing the difference between her body and her heart. One, she gave; the other, she didn’t. Pella had been right about that. But these feelings she’d been having about Giddon, the ones that flushed her with heat but also comforted her, weren’t coming just from her body. Nor were they new, or even particularly surprising. Honestly, she was a little embarrassed at not having noticed them before.

  Somehow or other, Bitterblue had missed the moment when she should have started guarding herself against loving Giddon. She couldn’t backtrack now. She loved him already. It was too late.

  But what did it mean? What was going to happen? Nothing? All the things?

  What if he didn’t love her? What would she do, left alone with all this feeling?

  Worse, what if he did love her, and, as always, she shied away? I do not want to hurt him, she thought. He’s my best friend. I have to do differently, or I’ll lose him entirely.

  In the morning, they woke to silence. No wind, no falling ice.

  “All right,” said Bitterblue, pushing herself up almost with ferocity. “Let’s go find someone who knows where Nev lives.” For now that she could see the truth, she was ready. Bitterblue had ample experience of forcing herself to face terrifying things.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  If Giddon saw one more snowflake, he was going to lose his mind.

  The storm blanketed Nev’s home for two days. Two days of being stranded, getting no closer to the Cavenda house, making no progress toward learning what Mikka had learned; two days with nothing to distract him from his stupid hopes about the silbercows rescuing Bitterblue.

  Hava had berated him about that, not gently. In the cold barn, with snow gusting through the windows and chickens squawking in the background, she’d thrown hot words at him. “Then where did the silbercows take her? Why haven’t we heard from her?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Why are you assuming they showed us something they saw? Maybe it was a story some human told them, or something they made up. Maybe they looked into your heart and got the story from you! Did you think of that? Why are you making this worse, Giddon?”

  “I—” His voice cracked. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, stop it!” she shouted, then pushed out of the barn into the blinding whiteness, leaving him alone.

  Giddon had this hope that could apparently live, even thrive, on almost no sustenance. He wondered if he’d always had it. He supposed it might be why he’d remained at Bitterblue’s court for years, working in Estill but always basing himself at her castle, while she came to him over and over to tell him her feelings about whatever man was sharing her bed. Why had he subjected himself to that? It had been because of his dumb, stupid hope.

  Nev had a grandfather, whose name was Saiet. He was a tall, slight man with bright eyes in a brown, wrinkled face. He was always making Giddon and Hava cups of tea, then going out into the storm and not coming back for hours. Nev would go with him sometimes, or sometimes go out on her own, for they were animal doctors, visiting the sick animals of their neighbors. Giddon, who found the short trek from the barn to the house harrowing and used the rope extended between the buildings to guide himself every time, was impressed by their storm hardiness.

  Nev’s mother, Nola, Saiet’s daughter, was solid-looking with a no-nonsense expression and short, dark hair like Nev’s. She went out often too, because she was a healer with her hands, through massage, and had patients who needed her. Davvi stayed home, for Davvi was a builder and no one wanted a builder in a storm. He sat in the cold, open area of the barn sometimes, sanding and hammering boards into a configuration that beg
an to look like a dresser. Davvi had built the house, the guest rooms in the barn, all the furniture. His workmanship, when Giddon could see it in the light, was tidy, elegant, even beautiful. He had a bad knee, from a fall off a ladder long ago, but it didn’t seem to slow him down. The members of this family were clearly good with their hands.

  Giddon’s hands, in contrast, were useless. There was nothing for him to do in the storm, beyond move firewood from the barn to the house, which took him all of seven minutes.

  “We have some ideas about how to spy on the Cavenda house,” Saiet would say over dinner, but all the ideas were dependent on getting advice from friends and neighbors who were unlikely to emerge until after the storm.

  And the storm went on and on.

  * * *

  —

  On Thursday morning, Giddon woke to a bright blue sky, a bright white planet, and Saiet’s bright face as he shoveled a path between the house and the barn. Giddon, joining in, shoveled for hours, steady and fast, too stir-crazy to take a break.

  “Giddon,” said Davvi, pausing in his own shoveling to watch Giddon decimate an icy wall of snow, “don’t you tire?”

  “I’m tired,” said Giddon, not slowing down.

  “You’re strong as an ox,” said Davvi, laughing. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Giddon was trying to kill his hope, but there was no point explaining it to Davvi. When the house and the barn were shoveled out, he started on the path into the woods, but Davvi asked him to shovel a path to one of the hot pools instead.

  “And then I want you to bathe in the pool,” Davvi said. “Please, Giddon, before you strain a muscle. Something’s driving you too hard.”

  Davvi was right, of course. And the pool, pleasant-smelling and impossibly warm, enclosed him in an embrace he hadn’t known he needed. Maybe this water warming his skin and soothing his muscles was the answer he was looking for. Maybe the hope could run out of his body, to be swallowed by this pool.

  He bathed for a long time, breathing, trying not to think. At one point, a blue fox passed through the trees nearby, its paws perched atop the snow, glinting curious gold eyes his way. They lived in the forests around here, apparently, or so Saiet said. They stayed close to human establishments because humans liked them, fed them, let them inside, sometimes spoiled them shamelessly, and occasionally one bonded to someone.

  Giddon heard a rustle behind him, much too heavy for a fox. Glancing around, he observed Saiet making his way along the path.

  “That was quick, wasn’t it?” said Giddon, for Saiet had gone out to check on a pregnant pig and Giddon had understood it to be a fair walk away.

  “I ran into some friends on the road,” he said. “I think you should put your clothes on, son, and come into the house.”

  Finally, someone who could help them with their plan. “I’m coming,” said Giddon, pushing himself up, drying and dressing quickly, for the cold air was a special kind of torture after the bliss of the hot pool. He stepped into his boots and clumped down the path, not bothering to fasten them, rubbing water out of his hair and his beard with his towel. He got to the house and opened the door.

  And there she was. His Bitterblue, his queen. Standing right there, looking right back at him. Giddon’s eyes blurred. He fell to his knees and began to cry. Bitterblue wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He held her, sobbing into her stomach, loving the silbercows, loving their stories. She was real. She was solid. She smelled like soap and she was stroking his hair and her voice was saying soft, comforting words. His vision was turning to stars. He couldn’t breathe. He heard her giggling and felt himself falling. Then everything went black.

  * * *

  —

  When he came to, he was lying on the floor with his head in Bitterblue’s lap.

  “I hope you know you’re never going to hear the end of this,” Bitterblue said.

  “Yes, please,” said Giddon, who wanted to be teased about this every day for the rest of his life. She was still stroking his hair.

  Nev’s family was bustling around them, preparing a meal. Hava, her pale face luminous and streaked with tears, was helping them. Saiet was setting out again for the pregnant pig. Giddon knew it was a small room, and he as a big, tall person was taking up much of the floor, but he didn’t want to relinquish his position. He was afraid that if he stood and she stopped touching him, it would turn into a dream.

  “What happened to you?” he said weakly.

  “Silbercows rescued me,” she said. “And then I’m afraid the Cavendas scooped me out of the sea.”

  “What?” cried Giddon, turning to look into her face.

  “They kept me in their attic,” she said.

  Giddon was up, on his knees, holding her shoulders. He could not contain this information. “Did they hurt you? Are you okay?”

  Bitterblue put a hand over his. “They didn’t hurt me,” she said, “beyond trying to scare and humiliate me and not giving me much food. I hardly saw them. Giddon,” she said, in that firm, clear voice that always cut through whatever whirl his mind was in. “Look at me. I’m fine.”

  Giddon looked at her. Her eyes were clear and gray, her hair in disorder, but familiar, dear. She was far too thin. She was wearing dirty pajamas. The face she held upturned to his was tired, and so happy. He could see that she was fine, but he knew that she’d suffered.

  “We were in that house,” he said, wonderingly. “You were there?”

  “I was. It’s gone now. Lovisa burned it to the ground and rescued me.”

  “Lovisa Cavenda?”

  “She’s sleeping,” Bitterblue said, indicating one of the family’s small bedrooms. “On our way here, she sent a signal message to the Ledra Magistry accusing her parents of kidnapping me and killing one of her friends. I think it was a very, very hard thing to do.”

  “Lovisa Cavenda burned her house down and rescued you?” he repeated dumbly.

  “Yes. She even destroyed two airships.”

  “When?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Sunday!” Giddon cried. “That’s the day we left.”

  “I know,” said Bitterblue. “I came as fast as I could, but the storm slowed us down.”

  “How did you know where to find us?”

  Her hand reached up again and touched the side of his face, once. “I have a lot to tell you, Giddon.”

  * * *

  —

  Over dinner, Bitterblue shared with them, quietly, the story of all that had happened to her.

  It was painful to listen to her relate her suffering and not be able to hold her, comfort her. He didn’t know if she felt that way too or simply sensed his feelings, but she found his hand under the table and gripped it tightly while she talked. He could tell she was doing the same with Hava on her other side.

  “All right,” he said finally, giving her hand back, not because he wanted to, but because, holding two hands, she couldn’t eat. “Have your dinner, Bitterblue.”

  And so she did, quickly, eating a mountain of food with small, reverential sighs that made his heart ache with happiness. Then she took his hand again.

  For a long time after dinner, Bitterblue, Hava, Giddon, and Nev’s family spoke and planned, low-voiced because Lovisa had not yet emerged from the bedroom.

  “Does Lovisa know what’s going on in her family’s northern house?” asked Giddon. “Should we ask her what Mikka might’ve overheard?”

  “I don’t think she knows,” said Bitterblue, “though we should ask, later, when she’s feeling better. Lovisa is overwhelmed. I haven’t even told her yet that her father drowned our men. And I’m afraid she found Katu’s ring and identification papers in her father’s desk. She thinks he’s dead.”

  As Bitterblue turned her own rings on her fingers, Giddon studied her troubled face, guessing what she must feel about that. “Surely not,�
� he said quietly.

  She lifted serious eyes to his. “We need to find out.”

  “We will.”

  “How soon can we get to that house?”

  “It’s a few hours by sea,” said Saiet. “We can arrange a boat for you, and we should talk about how to get those of you with no particular magic onto the property,” he said, with a deferential glance at Hava.

  “I could appear at the gate under the guise of a traveling animal doctor,” said Nev.

  “There’s a traveling everything, here in the north,” said Davvi. “I could be a traveling builder.”

  Bitterblue was rubbing her braids the way she did when her tiredness was turning to achiness.

  “Let’s decide tomorrow,” said Saiet, noticing. “Tonight is a night for going to bed early.”

  Of course, if Davvi had worried about the Monsean delegates sleeping in the barn, his objections to the Monsean queen doing so were all the more earnest. When Bitterblue insisted that she’d slept in haystacks before, Giddon and Hava both started laughing.

  “What?” said Bitterblue. “I have! You wouldn’t believe the places I slept with Katsa, when we were running away from my father. Katsa can balance herself on a plow blade and have a good night’s sleep.”

  “You’ll have a bed in the barn,” Giddon said. “A very comfortable one.”

  “But it’s true that it may not be fit for a queen,” said Nola quietly.

  “It’s fit for me,” said Bitterblue. “And I’ll feel safest close to my friends.”

  * * *

  —

  In his own tiny, warm room, Giddon lay in his bed, closed his eyes, and listened to the wind blowing fiercely around the barn. It muffled all other sounds, making him feel like he could be private with his thoughts. Of course, he began to cry.

  This is who I am now, apparently, he thought to Bitterblue, who was in the room next door. He never had to pretend-talk to her again if he didn’t want to. And he didn’t want to. Should he speak to her? How could he, with Katu’s fate unknown? He needed to let her recover and he needed to give himself time to come down from his own sense of overwhelm. He let his tears run, knowing that there was too much baffled happiness coursing through his veins for him to sleep anytime soon.