Bitterblue

you like. Couldn't you?'

Yes, said Fire. Though it would not be easy with you, for you're strong. You don't know it, but your unfriendly reception quite endeared you to us, Bitterblue. We hoped you would be strong.

'You say you don't want to take our minds. Mine or my people's.'

It's not why I'm here, said Fire.

'Would you do something for me if I asked you to?'

That depends on what it is.

'My mother said I was strong enough,' Bitterblue said, beginning to shiver. 'I was ten years old, and Leck was chasing us, and she knelt before me in a field of snow and gave me a knife and said that I was strong enough to survive what was coming. She said I had the heart and the mind of a queen.' Bitterblue turned her face away from Fire, just for a moment, because this was hard; saying this truth aloud was hard. 'I want to have the heart and mind of a queen,' she whispered. 'I want it more than anything. But I'm only pretending. I can't find the feeling of it inside me.'

Fire considered her quietly. You want me to look for it inside you.

'I just want to know,' Bitterblue said. 'If it's there, it would be a great comfort for me to know.'

Fire said, I can tell you already that it's there.

'Really?' Bitterblue whispered.

Queen Bitterblue, Fire said, shall I share with you the feeling of your own strength?

FIRE TOOK HER mind so that it was as if she were in her own bedroom, raw with crying and grief.

'This doesn't feel strong,' Bitterblue said.

Wait, said Fire, still kneeling beside her in the library. Be patient.

She was in her bedroom, raw with crying and grief. She was frightened, and certain that she was incapable of the task ahead. She was ashamed of her mistakes. She was small, and tired of being left. Furious with the people who left, and left, and left. Heartsore on account of a man on a bridge who betrayed her and then left, and a boy on a bridge who she knew somehow would be the next one to leave her.

Then something began to change in the room. None of the feelings changed, but Bitterblue encompassed them somehow. She was larger than the feelings, she held the feelings in an embrace, and murmured kindnesses to them and comforted them. She was the room. The room was alive, the gold of the walls glowed with life, the scarlet and gold stars of the ceiling were real. She was bigger than the room; she was the corridor and the sitting room and Helda's rooms. Helda was there, tired and worried and feeling some arthritis in her knitting hands, and Bitterblue embraced her, Bitterblue comforted her too, and eased the pain in her hands. And grew. She was the outer corridors, where she embraced her Lienid Door Guard. She was the offices and the tower and she embraced all the men who were broken and frightened and alone. She was the lower levels and the smaller courtyards, the High Court, the library, where so many of her friends were now; where people gathered from an entire other land. The most amazing thing, to discover a new land! And its people were in the library now, and Bitterblue was large enough to contain such a degree of wonder. And to embrace her friends among them, feel the complications of their feelings for each other, Katsa and Po, Katsa and Giddon, Raffin and Bann, Giddon and Po. The complications of her own feelings. She was the great courtyard, where water pounded and snow fell on glass. She was the art gallery, where Hava hid and where Bellamew's work stood as evidence of something that had transcended her father's cruelty. She was the kitchen, humming along with unending efficiency, and the stables where the winter sun burnished wood and horses whickered with hair in their eyes, and the practice rooms where men sweated, and the armory, and the smithy, the artisan courtyard where people were working, and she held all those people in her arms. She was the grounds, the walls, and the bridges, where Sapphire hid, and where Thiel had broken her heart.

She saw herself, tiny, fallen, crying and broken on the bridge. She could feel every person in the castle, every person in the city. She could hold every one of them in her arms; comfort every one. She was enormous, and electric with feeling, and wise. She reached down to the tiny person on the bridge and embraced that girl's broken heart.

PART FIVE The Ministry of Stories and Truth

(Late December and January)

43

IT WAS SOOTHING, when so little else in the world lent itself to clarity, to make lists of tasks that needed execution, then choose a person to entrust with each task. It was comforting to meet the person and understand, finally, why Helda or Teddy or Giddon had recommended the person. And heartening to discuss the task with that person, then leave the meeting feeling as if the execution of the task was perhaps not one of the five most hopeless undertakings on earth. She knew they couldn't all be, for there were well more than five tasks.

Hava had surprised Bitterblue with a few truly pertinent staff recommendations. The new Master of Prisons, for example, was a woman Hava had witnessed working on the silver docks, a Monsean Graceling named Goldie who'd grown up on a Lienid ship and eventually become the commander of the navy prison in Ror City. Upon returning to Monsea after Leck's death, she'd discovered that the Monsean Guard didn't employ women, at all, for anything, and certainly not to command its prisons. Goldie was Graced, of all things, with singing.

'My new prison master is a songbird,' Bitterblue muttered to herself at her desk. 'It's absurd.' But it was no less absurd than women not being employed by the Monsean Guard. She could accept the one to change the other. And it was an exciting change. The Dellians advised her on the matter, for they'd had women in their army for decades.

'I feel just a tad better about the Estill business now that you've made an ally in the Dellians, Bitterblue,' said Po, lying on his back on Bitterblue's sofa. 'At least about the danger of war. They're a serious military power. They'll back you if there's trouble.'

'Does this mean you've let go of the certainty that I'm about to be attacked at every moment?'

'No,' he said. 'The existence of the Council endangers you.'

'I'm a queen, Po,' Bitterblue retorted. 'I'll never be safe. Also, when it comes to war, the Dellians don't want to get involved.'

'The Dellians were pretending not to exist. Now they're behaving like neighbors. And you've charmed their mind reader, which is never easily done.'

'It can't be that hard, if Katsa charmed you.'

'You don't find me charming?' Katsa asked her from the sitting room floor, where she sat idly with her back to the sofa. 'Move over,' she said to Po, shoving his legs.

'Hello,' he said. 'Would it kill you to ask nicely?'

'I've been asking you nicely for at least ten seconds and you've been ignoring me. Move over. I want to sit down.'

Po made a show of beginning to move out of the way, then flipped himself off the sofa and flattened her. 'So predictable,' Bitterblue muttered as the two of them began wrestling on the rug.

'Fire is the sister-in-law of the king and the stepmother of the woman who commands the Dellian Army, Bitterblue,' yelled Po, his face jammed into the carpet. 'She's a valuable friend!'

'I'm right here,' Bitterblue said. 'You don't need to yell.'