Bitterblue

'I'm yelling because I'm in pain!' he yelled, his head under the sofa.

'I'm having a hard time with this letter,' said Bitterblue vaguely. 'What do you write to the elderly king of a foreign land when your kingdom is in shambles and you've only just discovered that he exists?'

'Tell him you hope to visit!' yelled Po, who seemed somehow to have gotten the upper hand. He was now straddling Katsa, trying to pin her shoulders to the ground.

Bitterblue sighed. 'Perhaps I should ask him for advice. Katsa, you've met him. How did he seem?'

Katsa now sat calmly on the stomach of her vanquished foe. 'He was handsome,' she said.

Po moaned. 'Was he beat-to-a-pulp handsome, or perhaps just push-down-a-flight-of-stairs handsome?'

'I would not push a seventy-six-year-old man down a flight of stairs,' said Katsa indignantly.

'I suppose I have that to look forward to, then,' Po said. 'Someday.'

'I've never pushed you down a flight of stairs,' Katsa said, beginning to laugh.

'I'd like to see you try.'

'Don't even joke. It's not funny.'

'Oh, wildcat.'

And now they were hugging. Bitterblue was left to roll her eyes and struggle alone with her letter to King Nash of the Dells.

'I've met a lot of kings, Bitterblue,' said Katsa. 'This one is a decent man, surrounded by decent people. They watched us quietly, for fifteen years, waiting to see if we could bumble ourselves into a more civilized state, rather than trying to conquer us. Po's right. You should tell him that you'd like to visit. And it would be entirely appropriate for you to ask him for advice. I have never been so happy,' she added, sighing.

'Happy?'

'When I understood that the land I'd found was a land slow to war, with a king who was not an ass, and Pikkia another peaceful nation above them, I'd never been so happy. It changes the balance of the world.'

ONE ADVANTAGE OF traveling by tunnel was that a tunnel made weather irrelevant. The Dellians could return in the winter, or wait until winter had passed—but, I miss my husband, Fire admitted to Bitterblue one day.

Bitterblue tried to imagine the kind of man who could be Fire's husband. 'Is your husband like you?'

Fire smiled. He is old like me.

'What is his name?'

Brigan.

'And how long have you been married to him?'

Forty-eight years, said Fire.

They were tromping across the back garden, for Bitterblue had wanted to show Fire the Bellamew of her mother, fierce and strong, turning into a mountain lion. Now Bitterblue stopped, hugging herself, letting the snow soak into her boots.

What is it, my dear? asked Fire, stopping beside her.

'It's the first time I've ever heard of two people being together that long, and neither dying, and neither being awful,' she said. 'It makes me happy.'

FIRE WAS MISSING two fingers, which had frightened Bitterblue the first time she'd noticed. Your father did not take them, Fire assured her; then asked her how much of a sad story she wanted to know.

This was how Bitterblue learned that forty-nine years ago, the Dells had been a kingdom with no certain shape, a kingdom recovering from a great evil. Like Monsea.

My father was a monster too, Fire told her.

'You mean, a monster like you?' asked Bitterblue.

He was a monster like me, said Fire, nodding, in the Dellian sense. He was a beautiful man with silver hair and a powerful mind. But he was a monster the way you normally use the word here as well. He was a terror, like your father. He used his power to destroy people. He destroyed our king and ruined our kingdom. That's why I came to you, Bitterblue.

'Because your father destroyed your kingdom?' Bitterblue said, confused.

Because when I heard about you, Fire said patiently, my heart burst open. I felt that I knew what you'd faced and what you're facing.

Bitterblue understood. Her voice was small. 'You came just to comfort me?'

I'm not a young woman, Bitterblue, Fire said, smiling. I did not come for the exercise. Here, I'll tell you the story.

And Bitterblue hugged herself again, because the story of the Dells was, indeed, sad, but also because it gave her hope for what Monsea could be in forty-nine years. And what she could be too.

Fire said something else that gave Bitterblue hope. She taught Bitterblue a word: Eemkerr. Eemkerr had been Leck's first, true name.

Bitterblue took this information straight to the library. 'Death?' she said. 'Do we have birth records for the seven kingdoms for the year Leck would have been born? Will you review them for someone with a name that sounds like Eemkerr?'

'A name that sounds like Eemkerr,' Death repeated, peering up at her from his new desk, which was covered with smelly, scorched papers.

'Lady Fire says that Leck told her that before his name was Leck, it was Eemkerr.'

'Which is a name she remembers from almost fifty years ago,' Death said sarcastically, 'spoken to her, not spelled, presumably not a name from her own language, and conveyed to you mentally fifty years later. And I'm to recall every instance of a name of that nature in all the birth records available to me from the relevant year for all seven kingdoms, on the extremely slim chance that we have the name right and a record exists?'

'I know you're just as happy as I am,' said Bitterblue.

Death's mouth twitched. Then he said, 'Give me some time to remember, Lady Queen.'

WHEN YOU VISIT us, Fire said, you will see the ways Leck tried to re-create the Dells here. I hope it doesn't distress you. Our kingdom is beautiful and I would hate for it to cause you pain.

They stood in Bitterblue's office, looking out at the bridges. 'I believe,' Bitterblue said, giving it careful consideration, 'that if your home reminds me of mine, I will like your home. Leck was—what he was. But he did manage, somehow, to make this castle beautiful and strange, and I'd be sorry to change some things about it. He accidentally filled it with art that tells the truth,' she said. 'And I've even begun to appreciate the folly of these bridges. They have little reason to exist, except as a monument to the truth of all that's happened, and because they're beautiful.'

Bitterblue let Winged Bridge fill her sight, floating blue and white, like a winged thing. Monster Bridge, where her mother's body had burned. Winter Bridge, glimmering with mirrors that reflected the gray of the winter sky.

She said, 'I suppose those are reasons to exist.'

WE WILL LEAVE before too long, said Fire. Do I understand that you'll send a small party with us?

'Yes,' Bitterblue said. 'Helda is helping me assemble it. I don't know most of them, Fire. I'm sorry not to send people I know more personally. My friends are absorbed with the Estillan situation and my own crisis here, and I fear that my clerks and guards are a bit too fragile right now for me to send with you.' It was difficult to characterize the effect Fire had on Bitterblue's clerks and guards, or indeed, on any of her more empty-eyed people. She brought a deep peace to some, she made others frantic, and Bitterblue wasn't certain that one was any better than the other. Her people needed practice sitting comfortably in their own minds.

There's one who's asked to join us that I believe you know well, said Fire.

'Is there?'

A sailor. He wants to join us in our exploration of the eastern seas. I understand that he's been in some trouble with your law, Bitterblue?

Ah, said Bitterblue, taking a breath through a rush of sadness. Absorbing the