“I’m sorry this happened because you were trying to figure out what became of my men,” said Bitterblue.
“I’m sorry about what became of your men,” said Katu, finally looking straight at Bitterblue, with an unhappy appeal in his face that solved the mystery of Katu’s strange stiffness. Lovisa now understood why Bitterblue had recognized Katu’s ring at a glance. And why Katu had been so concerned about the queen, the day of the rescue.
Lovisa searched inside herself for her own anger about Bitterblue and Katu, about everyone being lovers. About someone rejecting her uncle. She couldn’t find it. She didn’t care. People were stupid. Pigs were infinitely more worthwhile.
Then Katu stood up.
“Are you staying in Torla’s Neck?” Lovisa called from her corner, in a voice that broke. “Or are you going back to Ledra? Or traveling again?”
He turned his bright eyes to her, stretching his arms above his head like a man who’d worked a hard day, and was tired, and needed a long sleep before the next adventure. He wore his ring; it slid along his thumb, like a bracelet on a very small wrist. “I’m sure I’ll go back to Ledra before too long,” he said, smiling. “Isn’t that where you’ll be?”
“I—we’ll see,” she said.
Then everyone was standing, moving toward each other, people saying their goodbyes to Katu.
When Nev stood up, she came to Lovisa. “Your uncle’s hoping to see you in Ledra too,” she said, looking down at Lovisa with quiet eyes.
“I’m sorry I said the ignorant thing about the silbercows,” said Lovisa.
“It’s all right,” said Nev. “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“I don’t know anything about the ocean. I mean, really. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Aren’t the Scholars supposed to know about such things?” said Nev. “Isn’t their entire party supposed to revolve around protecting the environment from zilfium engines, and mining slag, and—one would hope—anything that hurts silbercows?”
Lovisa wasn’t certain what mining slag was, exactly. Shouldn’t she know that, since her family owned a mine? “I’m pretty sure it’s just about money,” she said.
“Surely not for everyone?” said Nev. “Is it really that hopeless?”
“Yes. It’s why I don’t want to go into politics.”
“But shouldn’t we want people who care about something other than money to go into politics?”
“And do what?”
“Throw their weight around!” said Nev. “Get in other people’s way!”
“I’m—very small,” said Lovisa.
Nev smiled at her joke, slow and sweet. Lovisa found herself holding Worthy closer, warmed by that smile. She wondered how long she’d been walking through a world she knew nothing about. Her whole life? Was there a way to learn more than she’d been taught?
“You should come back to school,” Nev said.
“I’m thinking about it,” said Lovisa.
* * *
—
Lovisa did think about it. She thought about it constantly, but she couldn’t see what it would mean. Nev couldn’t protect Lovisa from the nightmare she’d be walking through, once her feet hit the ground in Ledra.
The next day, she went to the hill with the rock seat Saiet had shown her. She had Worthy with her as usual, and a rag, and a flask of milk. He never, ever, seemed to stop eating. Lovisa was getting quite proficient at wrapping his little bottom in diapers, for what went in, later came out. Who am I? she asked herself, every time she performed a diaper change. What would the girls in the dorm think of this? Would they think I’d turned into an eccentric, like Quona Varana?
When, on her hill, she stood and walked to the place where she could see the water, then realized she was waiting, and hoping, for silbercows to appear, she wondered what her school friends would think of that too.
The problem, she thought as she stood there, was that she wasn’t ready to go back, but it hurt, terribly, to be left behind. And as much as she was afraid that her brothers wouldn’t want her, she wanted them; she wanted to hold them, keep them in her arms. Tell them she was sorry.
It was a problem with no solution. Whichever path she chose would be harder than she felt she could stand.
She caught sight of an airship in the distance, crawling north along the coast. That was it, then.
Then she saw another airship not far behind the first one. She started murmuring questions to Worthy. “What’s that second one for, my piglet? Are we too many people for one airship? No,” she decided, counting. “We can fit in one, even if I go.” She didn’t recognize either airship.
How strange it was, to feel curiosity pricking inside her. How long had it been since Lovisa had felt curious about anything? How strange too when her curiosity began to outshout her wish to be invisible and left alone.
She started back to Nev’s. It was a longish walk, this path in the woods that only days ago had seemed arbitrary, not a path at all. As she neared the house, a voice sounded sharply ahead. It contained cheer, politeness, and something deeply familiar. If it weren’t impossible, Lovisa would think she recognized that voice.
Disbelieving, she began to run, holding Worthy close, trying not to joggle him, then stopping cold at the sight of a person in a gold scarf. Mari, in the yard, talking to Grandpa Saiet. He was tall, and solid, and bright-eyed, and really there. He saw her and spread out his arms, shouted his joy. His parents were beside him. And suddenly her brothers appeared around him, her brothers. Vikti, Erita, Viri, alive, well, laughing. They shouted her name, ran at her, swarmed her with their sharp little knees and elbows, their wriggling, happy bodies. She had them in her arms.
* * *
—
She had everything now. It didn’t matter if she stayed or went, it didn’t matter where she was or what she did.
And they didn’t seem angry with her. They weren’t blaming her for anything. Surely it was a trick? “Lovisa!” said Erita. “Is that a pig?”
“It’s a pig!” said Viri delightedly. “It’s wearing a diaper! Arni! Mara! Mari! Look! Pig! Diaper!”
Lovisa stood shakily, confused, as Mari and his parents joined them. She didn’t know how to see Mari again, after everything. When she looked up at him shyly, he hugged her. “Don’t squash my pig,” she said, which made him start laughing.
“Say hello to my parents,” he said.
Lovisa had known Mari’s parents all her life, but never like this. Never in a forest, with a pig, after she’d burned half of Flag Hill down and thrown an explosive egg and her father was a murderer.
“Lovisa Cavenda,” said Mara, formally, but kindly. Lovisa had always felt like a mouse, or a mushroom, or at any rate, a child, beside Mara Devret.
“We’re all hoping you’ll come back with us,” she said. “Won’t you tell us that you will?”
I don’t know, Lovisa wanted to say. I can’t decide yet. I’m scared.
Then a small, sticky hand tucked itself inside hers, and Lovisa had her answer.
PART FIVE
The Keeper
There was nothing easy about carrying a ship across the ocean floor, especially now that the creature had a hurting nub in place of one of her tentacles.
The silbercows were surprised that her missing tentacle made such a difference, when she had so many other tentacles.
Only twelve, she said, beginning to wonder if silbercows thought everything was easy when one was big.
The silbercows asked her, given how hard it was, if it would conserve energy for her to stop singing so loudly as she went, but obviously that was a ridiculous suggestion. None of this would be possible if she weren’t bellowing her heart out as she dragged herself across the ocean floor. The bellowing protected her from how sad she was, which also happened to be the topic of her song. She was sad about losing her Storyworld and he
r tentacle, and she was worried about the skeletons of the two humans as she moved along. The silbercows had told her the story of what it must have been like for those two humans to find themselves locked in a room while other humans chopped a hole in the bottom of their boat, then abandoned them. Now she didn’t want them to be jostled. The thought of them suffering more than they’d already suffered was unbearable. That was the main thing she kept singing about.
The humans couldn’t suffer, the silbercows told her, now that they were dead. But of course this didn’t comfort her. Surely they hadn’t wanted to die!
The silbercows told her that sometimes a human or a silbercow didn’t have a choice, in a world of bullies.
I know! she said. That’s why I’m singing!
It’s also why the ocean needs heroes like the Keeper, said the silbercows significantly.
She could get very impatient when the silbercows started talking about the Keeper. The Keeper was silly, with her mesmerizing songs and her drawings that chased enemies away. And what about the part where the Keeper rose up and crushed the silbercows and humans if they didn’t do what she wanted? The Keeper sounds like a bully, she said. I think if you ever actually meet her, you should let me know, because I’m big, so I can stop her from bullying you.
The silbercows kept their thoughts about that to themselves. As she had requested, they sang with her as best they could—her songs were unpredictable, so it was hard sometimes to prepare for the next verse—and, gently, they shooed away any curious silbercows who approached. Not today, they told the visitors. Some other day. We’ll tell you when. It was interesting, how many silbercows tried to approach, for the singing today was especially powerful, and terrible in its sadness. But maybe the ocean was getting used to her singing. Maybe some were even drawn to its sadness, because it touched their own.
Chapter Forty-two
Upon their return to Ledra, Bitterblue and her delegation moved into a hotel.
This wasn’t customary for foreign dignitaries visiting Winterkeep, but Bitterblue was suing a few of the Ledra elite for openly lying to her in the course of trade, which made things awkward. She claimed that her evidence had been “mailed to her anonymously.” Since everyone knew her accusations to be founded, no one seemed prone to interfere.
Bitterblue’s advisers, who’d recently returned to Ledra, and her guards, who’d moved out of the ship to be with her, wandered around the hotel as if in a happy dream. Her advisers kept seeking Bitterblue out, then not knowing what to say. So she would invite them to eat cake with her, knowing that they just needed to sit with her for a while, looking at her, so that they could really believe that she was there. And she needed cake, so it served her purposes too.
They also accompanied her to dinners with the Ledra elite, who tried to one-up each other with how long she stayed at their tables and how much she liked their food. Or at least, that was the impression Bitterblue got. It surprised her, how much the elected leaders of this republic reminded her, at least superficially, of the nobility she contended with at home.
The delegation was renting the entire hotel. It made for empty, silent corridors and a slightly confused hotel staff, but Bitterblue needed the mental space it provided. Of course, it also meant that when a small fire broke out in the remote sitting room Hava used for herself, it took a while for anyone to respond to her calls.
When Bitterblue burst into the room, Giddon and several staff members on her heels, Hava was balanced on a crutch, trying to beat the flaming rug with a pillow.
“Hava!” cried Bitterblue. “Come away!”
“The notebooks!” Hava cried, resisting Bitterblue’s attempts to pull her off. “Linta Massera’s notebooks! They’re burning!”
“What? All of them?”
“I removed a couple of pages yesterday,” said Hava, beginning to cough violently. “The rest is gone.”
Consequently, when the Ledra Magistry arrived a few mornings later to ask whether the Monseans knew anything about the location of Linta’s missing notebooks, Hava handed them a bucket of burnt and sodden scraps, plus two perfectly preserved pages.
When the two pages turned out to be the instructions for mixing a chemical bath into which an egg could be submerged in order to degrade it, rendering it harmless, Bitterblue carefully avoided Giddon’s eyes. The whole thing was suddenly far too convenient.
“I’m so sorry,” Hava kept saying to the Magistry officers, using her Grace to make herself look fluttery and sweet.
“It’s all right, miss, really. It can’t be helped,” the Magistry officers kept responding, never quite noticing that their disinterest in challenging her was coming from the power her Grace had to slide their attention away from her.
The Magistry officers stayed for lunch. When they left, Hava did too, clunking out of the dining room and down the corridor on her crutches with small gasps. She wasn’t supposed to be relying so much on her crutches. It created a strain on her broken rib. But it was impossible to force Hava to keep still, impossible to impose any will upon her beside her own, so Bitterblue bit down on the words she wanted to say.
“Care to bet what Hava’s been up to?” she said quietly to Giddon.
“I’m hoping we’re about to find out,” he said, spreading butter and honey onto a slice of bread with the focus and precision of an artist. Giddon did things like that when he was pondering something else. He did it with his touch too, when they were together, rubbing Bitterblue’s shoulders or her neck unconsciously, but carefully, finding her tight, aching spots, while they talked or planned. It was definitely in her top ten favorite habits of his.
A few minutes later, they heard Hava’s crutches approaching again. She entered the dining room, lowered herself back into her chair with a small grunt of pain. Reached into her shirt and pulled out a thick pile of papers, which she handed to the queen.
Wordlessly, Bitterblue flipped through the pages. They were written in Hava’s handwriting, composed of diagrams and symbols Bitterblue didn’t understand, interspersed with stretches of Keepish.
“I copied them exactly,” Hava said. “Every picture, every page.”
Bitterblue cleared her throat. “And then,” she said, “you set the hotel on fire?”
“Hardly,” said Hava. “Just the rug.”
“You have a broken ankle and a broken rib. You stayed in that room, inhaling smoke, risking falling down—”
“You came when I knew you would.”
“Hava! You could have told us the plan.”
“I’m telling you now,” said Hava. Then she pushed herself up again and left the room.
Bitterblue sighed, then gathered the papers together, rolling them into a tube. She didn’t want them in her hands. They felt like a menace that might explode in her face. But they were hers now, and she was going to have to guard them, and decide what to do.
“Will I ever stop worrying about her?” she said, wishing that in addition to her criticisms of Hava, she’d remembered to say “Thank you.”
“Unlikely,” said Giddon, licking butter from his thumb.
“I keep secrets from her too,” Bitterblue said. “Things she should probably know.” For example, she hadn’t told Hava that blue foxes could read everyone’s minds and defied their bonded humans yet. She’d told Giddon, but was worried that telling Hava would break her promise to the fox. Nor did Hava know about Giddon, for the relationship was still so new, and so newly dear. Bitterblue didn’t have the armor yet to hold up against Hava’s sarcasm.
“You’ll tell her, when it’s time,” said Giddon gently.
“Yes,” said Bitterblue. “Speaking of which,” she added, her expression turning into something rueful. She didn’t want to do the next thing on their agenda today. “Should we go talk to Froggatt?”
* * *
—
They found Froggatt in the greenhouse on the ho
tel’s roof, staring at a tall, slender, pink lily.
“Would you join us for some tea and cake, Froggatt? Here among the flowers?” said Bitterblue, a suggestion that seemed to make him rapturously happy.
They sat at a small garden table. “We’re about to tell you something you must tell no one, Froggatt,” said Bitterblue. “Not even other members of my staff.”
Froggatt swelled at this honor. “Yes, Lady Queen?”
“Giddon and I are getting married.”
Now Froggatt flushed. “But, Lady Queen!”
“I don’t want to hear a word about him being a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns,” said Bitterblue.
“My concern, Lady Queen, is less that he’s a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns and more that the reason he’s a disinherited ex-lord from the Middluns is that he spends his time crossing the seven kingdoms—”
“Seven Nations,” Bitterblue corrected.
“Seven Nations, which are no longer the seven kingdoms precisely because your proposed future husband is a renegade who, along with his renegade friends, captures and deposes monarchs! And you are a queen!”
“Yes,” said Bitterblue. “We agree it’s awkward. But no relationship is without its challenges, Froggatt. This is going to happen. I’ve chosen you as our ally here at the beginning because someone in a queen’s circle should know her marital intentions, and because we’ll need support when we make the news public. Was I wrong to trust you?”
Whatever Froggatt had been going to say next, he swallowed it. “Of course not, Lady Queen.”
“You understand that you have no license to try to talk me—or Giddon—out of it?”
“I understand that you’ve made up your mind, Lady Queen.”
“Good.”
“And I hope you’ll both be very happy,” he added belatedly, perhaps after noticing the twitch of Giddon’s mouth across the table.
“Thank you,” said Giddon gravely.
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