“You could insist on research into other fuels besides zilfium,” said Lovisa. “You could try to get the rest of the world to care about the problem. You could break the Varanas’ monopoly on varane production. You could ask someone other than your self-interested Ledran friends for ideas. You could try to inspire people!”
Gorga’s eyes had gone rather bright as he watched her rising agitation. “This is the start of an excellent list, Lovisa,” he’d said. “What would you think of an independent study next term, examining these questions more fully?”
* * *
—
On her bench on the cliff, Lovisa was trying to come to a decision about the queen’s offer when something extraordinary happened.
A vibration grew around her, starting low, then pushing itself into her consciousness. It was a sense of something swelling, impossibly, in the sea. And it was dark on the water, the light falling fast. But Lovisa saw.
What was it that she saw? Looking back later, Lovisa was never sure what the honest answer was to that question. She saw a mountain, black in silhouette, rising out of the ocean. It had long, winding, wavering legs. And it was making a dreadful, almost unbearable noise, maybe not the kind her ears could hear—it was hard to tell what part of her body was hearing it—but the kind that flooded every cell with a need for the terrible, loud pressure to stop.
One of the mountain’s long legs was holding something. An object with hard edges. Slowly, the leg lifted the object into the air, water streaming down from its surface. Then the leg placed the object gently on the beach to the left of Lovisa’s cliff, nearer to the city.
The mountain receded. Gradually, mercifully, so did the noise.
At her bench, Lovisa was standing. “Icositetrapus cyclops!” she was shouting aloud to the air. “Icositetrapus cyclops! What? What?” turning in circles, looking for someone to talk to. Someone to whom to say, “Did you see that?” and demand, “What was that?”
She was alone.
Lovisa sat down, stood up again, sat down. She couldn’t begin to understand it. Nor could she believe it, except that at the water’s edge on the sand to the left, a large, oblong shape that had certainly not been there before was cast ashore, like a beached ship.
In fact, the more Lovisa looked, the more she believed that it was a beached ship.
She began to be frightened that she was losing her sanity. When, a moment later, voices and images appeared in her mind unbidden, her fears sharpened into a certainty.
Then she saw the small, smooth shapes out at sea, gliding, playing in the sunset water. Silbercows? Is that what was happening? Had they noticed her? Could they possibly—
Yes. She felt them, like a soft touch brushing against her heart. They were calling out to her, wanting to talk. To her!
We heard you, they said, in the north. We heard you say you’re sorry.
It wasn’t words; it was pictures, ideas. Feelings. Lovisa felt breathless, dizzy, but she thought she understood.
It’s not your fault, they told her.
What? she said, not sure how to talk to them, not sure what to say. What just happened?
That creature you saw just now, they told her. It wasn’t the Keeper. Not exactly. The Keeper is a story. That was our big, strong friend. She’s real.
How did one talk to silbercows? She tried it again. I don’t understand, she told them.
That ship on the beach is the Seashell, they told her. With two bodies trapped inside. Mikka and Brek.
Lovisa was cast into a new kind of shock. What? she cried out. You brought us the Seashell? How did you do that? Why would you do that?
It’s the evidence you need, they told her. There’s a lock on their door.
Evidence?
Evidence that they were murdered, they told her. Our friend is big. She’s big enough to move ships. We want to help you humans, so you’ll help us. We know you need true things for your courts.
You know that? Lovisa said. How do you know that?
Why wouldn’t we know that? they said. We talk to humans. We’re part of your world. Some humans are our friends. Do you know the small human who lost the ring?
The queen? said Lovisa, incredulous.
They asked her, Can you come down to the water?
* * *
—
Lovisa walked north, to a place where steps in the cliff led down to a little beach. It was a different beach from the one where the ship was sitting. She didn’t want to go anywhere near that beach, for human voices had begun to sound down there, calls of amazement, shouts. “Did you see that? Did you hear it?” She didn’t want to be part of their speculation, their wonder. Their horror, when they discovered the bodies inside. Lovisa didn’t want to see any more bodies.
When she got down to the water, the silbercows were waiting for her, floating some distance from the shore. She didn’t know how to get close to them. She had no boat. When one of them swam up close to the beach, so close that Lovisa was frightened for its safety, she walked right into the water.
It was freezing. Aghast, she strode in up to her thighs, suspecting she was ruining her shoes, her trousers, her coat, and remembering, of course, that she no longer knew where the money would come from to buy new things. The Devrets, probably, which wasn’t right. But Lovisa was beyond that just now. She’d watched a sea monster—the silbercows had said it wasn’t the Keeper, but when she told her brothers this story, they would make it the Keeper—everyone would make it the Keeper—lift the Seashell out of the sea. It was just the sort of thing the Keeper would do. Who cared about her clothes? The ocean had shared a secret with her. A monster had reached out and delivered a miracle. This world kept wanting to be bigger than she was letting it. Why did she keep trapping herself inside small things?
Lovisa had never been so close to a silbercow before. Physically, it was little more than a dark shape rising from the water before her, but in her feelings and her mind, it was a great deal more. As it talked to her, she felt, to be honest, as if her brain were trying to rise out of her skull. It wasn’t an entirely pleasant feeling. Her body became awash in a sadness that she understood was the silbercow’s sadness. She began to cry, at the thought that her parents had done something to hurt this creature. I’m sorry, she started saying again. I’m sorry.
It wasn’t your fault, the silbercow said.
Maybe that was true. But Lovisa was beginning to understand that it was her legacy. I’m going to make up for it, she said, not knowing what it meant, but certain, in that moment, that it was true. I’m going to protect you.
I believe you’re going to try, said the silbercow. I can feel the fire in your heart.
Lovisa saw then that the silbercow was holding a tiny, hard ring in its mouth. She understood that she was supposed to take it. She held out her hand.
The silbercow dropped the ring into her hand. It was cold and wet and small. She understood that she was now tasked with returning it to the queen.
Then she understood something else. A sort of doubtful apology from the silbercow, on behalf of their monster friend, who was very unhappy. Unhappy about the ship? About the drowned humans? Lovisa wasn’t understanding this part entirely, but she did understand that the silbercow wanted to know if she had any . . . it was hard to believe, but the silbercow wondered if Lovisa had any sparkly baubles. Any shiny human thing she didn’t care about. If it could be worn as a ring, so much the better.
For the monster? Lovisa asked, thoroughly confused.
Yes.
The monster wants a sparkly bauble?
It would make her very happy.
From her state of mental chaos, Lovisa did an inventory of her person, because if the monster wanted a sparkly bauble, she wanted the monster to have a sparkly bauble. She had some snacks and one of Worthy’s milk rags in her pockets, all sodden now, but no baubles, and she w
ore no jewelry. Then she remembered something. Reaching into the front of her coat, she pulled the string with the attic room key over her head. She held it up, considering it. In the twilight, the purple stone sparkled and the metal of the key glimmered silver.
She felt a sort of relieved sigh coming from the silbercow, and considered that the key had a steel loop at the top. If someone really wanted to, they could wear it as a ring.
Or a necklace, the silbercow said, around one of her eye-stems.
Uncertain, but deciding, Lovisa held the key out to the silbercow, who took it gently in its mouth. Lovisa felt a thank-you, then the silbercow turned and took off. It had happened so fast, the relinquishing of that key. Lovisa looked for a sign of the silbercow streaking across the water, but it was gone.
Will you come talk to me again? she cried out desperately.
Yes, Lovisa Cavenda, said the silbercow, in a fading voice. You will be our friend.
* * *
—
Lovisa walked back to the city, dripping water, stomping her feet hard to warm them. The ends of her coat began to form a frozen sort of shield around her legs.
When she reached the tall, brightly lit hotel where the queen was staying, she stood outside for a moment, watching snowflakes hit its glass windows, then slide down like rain.
It had taken her so long to give up that key, the key to her cage. But it was a cage that no longer existed, because she’d destroyed it, by herself. Freeing Bitterblue was freeing herself. What would’ve happened if she hadn’t?
Now the key had moved on, to the bottom of the sea, where it belonged. It was someone else’s treasure. She’d received the Seashell in return, the missing link for the Magistry in the story of her parents’ crimes. Those two murders would be added to the charges against her father.
There was more. Lovisa had seen something today. She had a story to tell. She thought it might even be an inspiring story. “The Keeper is a fairy tale,” she could say, “but what I saw was real. Are you so sure that the silbercows are making things up?”
What if her story could make people want to hear new voices, new ideas? What if Lovisa was discovering that she agreed with Nev that silbercows should have a voice in Parliament? What if she made it a political experiment, to figure out what words, what way of telling her story, would get other people to think so too? She was sixteen. That was still young, wasn’t it? She’d already wasted a lot of time. What if she started now? Who could help her? Gorga? Mara? Nev? How long would it take her to learn all she needed to know?
Staring up at the windows of the foreign queen, Lovisa was beginning to understand how much she wanted a bigger world than she’d ever been promised as a child. There were monsters in the sea who returned lost items, and silbercows she could talk to, and a pig wandering the Devrets’ heat ducts. There were smugglers pulling off questionable feats of engineering in the north, and glaciers calving icebergs into the sea, and problems here in Parliament, for people to argue about as if they cared. Some of them actually did care.
And she was thinking now not about what it would mean to her brothers if she did or didn’t testify against her father, but about what it would mean to her. What did any of this mean to her? What had her father done to her? Her father had lied to her, playacted. He’d pretended to be her ally against her mother, then betrayed her repeatedly. He’d killed a boy she’d brought home. He’d compelled her to do desperate and destructive things—set fire to a house, throw an explosive egg—to save other people. And now, finally, he’d put her in the position of having to decide whether to tell the truth about him, then live with the consequences forever.
I believe you think you love me, Papa, she thought, in your way. But I’m worthy of more.
She stepped into the light of the hotel’s entrance. The guards, recognizing her, glanced dubiously at the sodden lower half of her coat, then let her in.
* * *
—
She found the queen and Giddon in an upstairs library, sitting on a sofa together, eating cake that, inexplicably, had flaming candles stuck into it.
“Lovisa,” said Bitterblue in a glad voice, patting the space beside her. “We’re celebrating Giddon’s birthday. Have some cake.” Her eyes were wide and trusting. Bitterblue’s eyes had used to track Lovisa anxiously, as if Lovisa was about to do something desperate. Lovisa had known what Bitterblue had been thinking then. She’d understood why the queen had asked her questions to distract her, or created jobs to keep her away from a cliff’s edge. Lovisa was grateful, for the queen had been right.
Now Lovisa could feel herself standing on solid ground. The queen had offered to shoulder her burden, but Lovisa wanted strong shoulders of her own, to carry well whatever she was given.
She indicated the state of her coat. “I’m a mess,” she said, “so I won’t sit down.”
Abruptly, Giddon stood and left the room. “Have you been in the sea?” the queen asked.
“Something like that.”
Giddon came back with a towel. “Oh,” Lovisa said, touched by this thoughtfulness. “Thank you.”
She took a moment to rub down her coat and legs. Then she said, “I’ve been thinking about your offer.”
“Yes?” said Bitterblue.
“I’m grateful,” said Lovisa. “For that, and for everything.” She took a careful breath. “I’ve decided that it’s my truth. I’ll say it myself.”
The queen’s eyes were bright. “You know you can always change your mind?”
“I know,” said Lovisa, who wasn’t going to change her mind.
The queen nodded. “I’m proud of you.”
“And now,” said Lovisa, reaching into her pocket, enclosing the small, cold ring in her hand, and holding it out to the queen. “Are you ready for a little magic?”
Cast of Characters
From Winterkeep
Ada Balava: An importer of Monsean zilfium.
Adventure Fox (Adventure, Ad): A blue fox bonded to Ferla Cavenda.
Arni Devret: The father of Mari Devret. A banker.
Benni Cavenda: The father of Lovisa Cavenda. An owner of a shipping business, an importer of Monsean zilfium, and an Industry representative in Parliament.
Davvi: The father of Nev. A builder.
Dev Dimara: A zilfium shipper and a Scholar representative in Parliament.
Earmuff: A blue fox bonded to Gorga Balava.
Ella: A housemaid at the Cavenda property in Torla’s Neck.
Erita Cavenda: A brother of Lovisa Cavenda, seven years old. Observant.
Ferla Cavenda: The mother of Lovisa Cavenda. The co-owner of a silver mine with her brother, Katu, a Scholar, and the President of Winterkeep.
Gorga Balava: A professor in the school of politics and government at the Winterkeep Academy and an Industry representative in Parliament.
Katu Cavenda: The brother of Ferla Cavenda, with whom he co-owns a silver mine. The uncle of Lovisa Cavenda. A traveler and adventurer.
The Keeper: A mythical undersea creature in the fairy tales told by the silbercows. The keeper of the planet, she exhorts silbercows and humans to help her protect the earth and the sea.
Kep Gravla: A student at the Winterkeep Academy and a childhood neighbor of Lovisa Cavenda and Mari Devret.
Little Guy: A blue fox kit living with Nev in the dorms of the Winterkeep Academy.
Liv: The cook at the Cavenda property in Torla’s Neck.
Lovisa Cavenda: A student of politics and government at the Winterkeep Academy. The daughter of Ferla and Benni Cavenda. The sister of Viri, Erita, and Vikti Cavenda. The niece of Katu Cavenda.
Mara Devret: The mother of Mari Devret. An Industry representative in Parliament.
Mari Devret: A student of medicine at the Winterkeep Academy. The son of Mara and Arni Devret. The oldest friend of Lovisa Cavenda.
Mirni Tima: An importer of Monsean zilfium.
Minta Varana: An airship engineer and an importer of Monsean zilfium. The sister of Quona and Sara Varana. A Scholar politically.
Nev: A scholarship student of animal medicine at the Winterkeep Academy, from Torla’s Neck. The daughter of Davvi and Nola and the granddaughter of Saiet.
Nola: The mother of Nev. A healer through massage.
Nori Orfa: A student of animal medicine at the Winterkeep Academy, from Torla’s Neck.
Ona: The firekeeper on Trader’s Beach.
Pari Parnin: A student at the Winterkeep Academy.
Quona Varana: An animal doctor and an environmentalist. A professor of animal medicine at the Winterkeep Academy. The sister of Minta and Sara Varana. A Scholar politically.
Saiet: The grandfather of Nev. An animal doctor.
Sara Varana: A Scholar and the Prime Minister of Winterkeep. The sister of Minta and Quona Varana.
Ta Varana: A student at the Winterkeep Academy. The daughter of Minta Varana.
Vera: The proprietor of a bath north of Ledra. An airship smuggler.
Vikti Cavenda: A brother of Lovisa Cavenda, nine years old. Quiet.
Viri Cavenda: A brother of Lovisa Cavenda, five years old. Curious.
Worthy: A pig.
From the Royal Continent
Ashen: The mother of Bitterblue and the previous Queen of Monsea. From Lienid. Deceased.
Barra: An adviser to Queen Bitterblue.
Bitterblue: The Queen of Monsea.
Brek: A previous adviser to Queen Bitterblue. He drowned in Winterkeep with Mikka.
Cobal: The Estillan envoy to Winterkeep.
Coran: An adviser and doctor to Queen Bitterblue.
Froggatt: Queen Bitterblue’s foremost adviser.
Giddon: One of the leaders of the Council. A dispossessed Middluns lord and a friend of Queen Bitterblue.
Winterkeep Page 48