Bitterblue

'Yes,' he said. 'The committee of nobles will continue to rule by vote, alongside another committee of equal power that will be comprised of representatives elected by the people.'

'You mean like a sort of . . . aristocratic and democratic republic?' said Bitterblue, plucking terms from the book about monarchy and tyranny.

'Something like that, yes.'

'Fascinating. Did you know that in the Dells, a man can take a husband and a woman can take a wife? Fire told me so.'

'Mnph,' he said, then focused his eyes on her quietly. 'Is that true?'

'It is. And the king himself is married to a woman who hasn't a drop of noble blood in her veins.'

Raffin was quiet for a moment, poking around in the snow with a stick. Bitterblue spent that moment in front of Bellamew's sculpture, looking into the living eyes of her mother. Touching the scarf she was wearing and gathering strength. Finally, Raffin said, 'That's not the way of things in the Middluns.'

'No,' said Bitterblue. 'But it is the way in the Middluns for the king to do as he likes.'

Raffin stood, knees cracking, and came to her. 'My father is a healthy man,' he said.

'Oh, Raffin,' she said. 'May I give you a hug?'

IT WAS HARD to say good-bye.

'Do you think I could ever write you letters in embroidery that you could feel with your fingers, Po,' Bitterblue asked him, 'when you're away?'

He cracked a grin. 'Katsa scratches me notes now and then in wood, when she's desperate. But wouldn't you have to learn to embroider?'

'There is that,' said Bitterblue, smiling with him, hugging him.

'I'll come back,' Po said to her. 'I promised, remember?'

'I'll come back too,' said Katsa. 'It's time I gave lessons here again, Bitterblue.'

Katsa hugged her for a long time, and Bitterblue understood that this was always how it would be. Katsa would come and then Katsa would go. But the hug was real, and lasting, even though it would end. The coming was as real as the going, and the coming would always be a promise. It would have to be good enough.

She went to the art gallery the night they all left, because she was lonely.

And then Hava led Bitterblue downstairs, to a place in the castle Bitterblue hadn't yet been. They sat together at the top of the prison steps, listening to Goldie sing a lullaby to her prisoners.

45

AN UNCLE AND king was waiting for Bitterblue in Monport, with a navy on display for her pleasure. Bitterblue would go to meet him.

The day before she left, she sat in her office, reflecting. Thirty of Leck's thirty-five journals had been destroyed in the fire Thiel had lit. Terrified now of fire, Death was trying to read, decipher, and memorize the five surviving journals in one mad rush. Bitterblue understood the scope of such a catastrophic loss of information. But she couldn't make herself grieve. Her relief was too great. She thought she might like to read her father's five remaining journals, eventually, someday. Five journals did not feel undoably awful. Maybe she would be able to read them, years from now, before a fireplace, wrapped in blankets, while someone held her tight. But not now.

She'd asked Helda to take her mother's sheets away. They were also for some other day, some other time when they weren't so painful. Maybe someday, they would feel more like a memory of pain than like pain itself. And she didn't need them around to remember. She had her mother's chest and all the things in it, she had Ashen's scarves and the Bellamew sculpture, and she had her grief.

Her new sheets were smooth and even. When they touched her skin softly, without the rough bumps of embroidery at the edges, she was startled; and a kind of relief eased its way through her, as if the sores in her mind and on her heart might begin to heal.

My kingdom's challenge, she thought, is to balance knowing with healing.

Her clerks and guards had taken to coming to her for confessionals. Holt had started it, appearing in her office one day and saying, 'Lady Queen, if you're to forgive me, I'd like you to know what you're forgiving me for.'

It had not been an easy thing for Holt to do. He had killed inmates in the prisons for Thiel and Runnemood, and he couldn't even begin to force into words the things Leck had made him do. He became confused and tongue- tied, kneeling before Bitterblue with his hands clutched together and his head bowed.

'I do want to tell you, Lady Queen,' he finally choked out. 'But I can't.'

Bitterblue didn't know what to do for her people who needed to tell things but couldn't. She thought it might be something to ask Po—who had a special insight into what would do people good—or Fire. 'I'll help you with this, Holt,' she said. 'I promise, I won't leave you alone with this. Will you be patient with me, and I'll be patient with you?'

She had one more ministry to build. Of all of her ministries, it would be the one with which she would take the most care. She wouldn't force it on anyone, but she would make its existence widely known. It would be a ministry for all the people whose pain could be acknowledged, maybe even eased, by the telling and recording of what their own experiences had been. It would have a space of its own in the castle, a library where stories were kept, and a minister and staff that her friends would help her choose. Some of the staff would travel, to reach people who couldn't come to the city. It would be a safe place for the sharing of burdens and the capturing of memories before they disappeared. It would be called the Ministry of Stories and Truth, and it would help her kingdom heal.

'LADY QUEEN?'

The sun was setting and a light snowfall had begun. Bitterblue looked up from her desk into the familiar, sharp, and weary face of Death.

'Death,' Bitterblue said. 'How are you?'

'Lady Queen,' said Death, 'a boy named Immiker was born on a riverside estate in northern Monsea fifty- nine years ago, to a game warden named Larch and a woman named Mikra who died in childbirth.'

'Fifty-nine,' Bitterblue said. 'That's the correct age. Is it him?'

'I don't know, Lady Queen,' Death said. 'Possibly. There are other records of similarly named people that I must consider.'

'Could this mean I'm Monsean?'

'It matches some of the particulars, Lady Queen, and we can go on looking for clues. But I can't imagine us ever being certain that this is him. Regardless,' Death said crisply, 'I don't see that there's any question of whether or not you are Monsean. You are our queen, are you not?'

Death dropped a small sheaf of papers onto her desk, turned sharply on his heel, and left.

Bitterblue rubbed her neck, sighing. Then she pulled Death's papers closer.

I have completed the translation of the first journal, Lady Queen, she read. It is, as I'd already surmised, the last journal he ever wrote. It ends with your mother's death and with your father's subsequent search of the forest for you. It also ends with the details of his punishment of Thiel, Lady Queen, for on the day you escaped with your mother, it seems that one of Leck's knives went missing. Leck decided that Thiel had stolen it and passed it to your mother. I will spare you the details.

At her desk, Bitterblue hugged herself, feeling very high in the sky, and very alone. A memory, like a door opening onto light, unlocked itself. Thiel bursting into her mother's rooms, where Ashen had been engaged in the insane enterprise of tying sheets together and lowering them out the window. Bitterblue had been shaking with fright, for what she knew they were about to do.

Thiel's face had been running with tears and blood. 'Go,' he'd said, rushing to Ashen and handing her a knife that was longer than Bitterblue's forearm. 'You must go now.' He'd embraced Ashen, said, 'Now!' in a forceful voice, then dropped on his knees before Bitterblue. He had pulled her into his arms and stopped her shaking with his tight grip. 'Don't you worry,' he'd said to her. 'Your mother will keep you from harm, Bitterblue. Believe what she says, you understand? Believe every word she says. Go now, and be safe.' Then he'd kissed her forehead and run