Bitterblue

Fox regarded the queen calmly with unmatching gray eyes. She wore a new hood that was just like the old one, the one Bitterblue was wearing at this moment. The difference between the two women was marked: Bitterblue small, plain, guilty, and not particularly clean; Fox tall and striking, with nothing to be ashamed of.

'Lady Queen,' she said, 'I won't tell a soul.'

'Oh, thank you,' Bitterblue said, almost light-headed with relief. 'Thank you.'

Fox bowed her head, stepped aside, and that was that.

Minutes later, soaking in the bath, Bitterblue heard rain, thudding on the castle roofs.

She was grateful to the skies for waiting until she'd gotten home.

* * * * *

RAIN STREAMED DOWN the canted glass roofs of her tower office and raced into the gutters.

'Thiel?'

He was at his stand, pen scritching across paper. 'Yes, Lady Queen?'

'Thiel, Lord Danzhol said some things after he knocked you out that worry me.'

'Oh?' Thiel set his pen down and came to stand before her, all concern. 'I'm sorry to hear that, Lady Queen. If you'll tell me what he said, I'm confident that we'll be able to resolve it.'

'He was some sort of crony of Leck's, wasn't he?'

Thiel blinked. 'Was he, Lady Queen? What did he tell you?'

'Do you know what it meant to be a crony of Leck's?' Bitterblue asked. 'I know you don't like questions like that, Thiel, but I must know the basics of what happened, you see, if I'm to know how to help my people.'

'Lady Queen,' said Thiel, 'my reason for disliking such a question is that I don't know the answer. I had my own run-ins with King Leck, as you know, as I expect we all did, and would all prefer not to talk about. But he would disappear for hours, Lady Queen, and I haven't the foggiest notion where he would go. I know nothing beyond the bare fact that he would go. None of your advisers do. I hope you'll trust me on that, and not trouble the others. We've only just got Rood back into the offices. You know he's not strong.'

'Danzhol told me,' Bitterblue lied, 'that everything he stole from his people, he stole for Leck's sake, and that other lords stole from their people for Leck too. That means there are other lords and ladies out there like Danzhol, Thiel, and it also means that there are citizens from whom Leck stole who could benefit from remuneration. You do understand that the crown is liable to these people, Thiel? It will help us all move forward to settle such debts.'

'Oh, dear,' Thiel said, steadying a hand on her desk. 'I see,' he said. 'Lord Danzhol, of course, was mad, Lady Queen.'

'But I've asked my personal spies to make some inquiries, Thiel,' Bitterblue improvised smoothly. 'It seems that Danzhol was right.'

'Your personal spies,' Thiel repeated. His eyes were beginning to shift to confusion, then to a kind of blankness, so quickly that she reached out to stop him.

'No,' she said, pleading with the fading feeling in his eyes. 'Please, Thiel, don't. Why do you do that? I need your help!'

But Thiel was wrapped in himself, not speaking, not seeming to hear.

It's like being left alone in a room with a shell, thought Bitterblue. And it happens so fast. 'I'll just have to go down and ask one of the others,' she said.

A rough voice came out of the middle of him somewhere. 'Don't leave me quite yet, Lady Queen,' he said. 'Please wait. I have the right answer. May I—may I sit, Lady Queen?'

'Of course!'

Heavily, he did so. After a moment, he said, 'The trouble lies with the blanket pardons, Lady Queen. The blanket pardons, and the impossibility of ever proving, beyond doubt, that those who stole, stole for Leck and not for themselves.'

'Wasn't the very reason for the blanket pardons the assumption that Leck was the true cause of all crime?'

'No, Lady Queen,' said Thiel. 'The reason for the blanket pardons was the acknowledgment of the impossibility of our ever knowing the truth about anything.'

What a depressing notion. 'Nonetheless, someone needs to provide reparation to those who were victimized.'

'Don't you think, Lady Queen, that if citizens wished your reparation, they would tell you so?'

'Do they have means?'

'Anyone may write the court a letter, Lady Queen, and every letter is read by your clerks.'

'But do they know how to write?'

The eyes Thiel trained on her face were awake now, and filled with a perfect comprehension of her meaning. 'After yesterday's argument, Lady Queen,' he said, 'I challenged Runnemood on the matter of the literacy statistics. I'm sorry to say that he admitted that he has, in fact, been embellishing them. He has a habit of . . . erring on the side of optimism in his representations. It is,' said Thiel, clearing his throat delicately, 'one of the qualities that makes him a valuable agent of the court in the city. But of course, he must be transparent with us. He will be from now on. I've made that plain to him. And, yes, Lady Queen,' Thiel added firmly. 'Enough of your citizens know how to write; you've seen the charters. I maintain that if they wished reparation, they would write.'

'Well then, I'm sorry, but it's not good enough, Thiel. I can't bear to walk around knowing how much this court owes people. I don't care whether they want it from me or not. It's not fair for me not to give it.'

Thiel considered her silently, hands folded before him. She didn't understand the peculiar hopelessness in his eyes. 'Thiel,' she said, almost begging. 'Please. What is it? What's wrong?'

After a moment, he said quietly, 'I understand you, Lady Queen, and I'm pleased you came to me about this. I hope you always will come to me first with such matters. Here is what I recommend: Write to your uncle and ask his advice. When he visits, perhaps we can discuss the way to proceed.'

It was true that Ror would know what to do and how best to do it. It wasn't terrible advice. But Ror's visit was scheduled for January, and it was only just September.

Perhaps, if she wrote to him, he could send suggestions ahead of his visit, in letters.

THE RAIN WAS soporific, throwing itself against her glass roof and the stone of her round walls. She wondered what it was like in the great courtyard today, where water pounded on the glass ceilings and overflow from the gutters poured into a fat rain pipe that snaked down the courtyard wall, ending with a gargoyle that vomited rainwater into the fountain pool. On days like this, the pool overflowed onto the courtyard floor. No water was wasted: It found drains in the floor that led to cisterns in the cellars and the prison.

It was impractical, the courtyard flood that accompanied rainy days. It was a strange design, easy enough to reverse. Except that it did no structural damage in a courtyard that had originally been built to be rained on; and except that Bitterblue loved it, on the rare occasions when she was able to escape her office to see it. The tiles on the floor surrounding the fountain were adorned with mosaics of fish that seemed to flop and swim under the sheen of water. Leck had intended the courtyard to be dramatic in the rain.

When Darby pushed into the room with a pile of papers so high that he needed both arms, Bitterblue announced that she was taking a walk to the royal smithy to order a sword.

But good heavens, they responded, did she realize that to reach the smithy, one must cross the grounds, in the rain? Had it not occurred to her that it would save time to summon a smith to her tower, rather than go herself? Had she not considered that it might be viewed as unusual—

'Oh, for mercy's sake,' Bitterblue snapped at her advisers. 'I'm proposing a walk to the smithy, not an expedition to the moon. I'll be back in a matter of minutes. In the meantime, you can all return to work and stop being annoying, if such a thing is possible.'

'At least take an umbrella, Lady Queen,' pleaded Rood.

'I won't,' she said, then swept out of the room as dramatically as possible.

STANDING IN THE east vestibule, peeking through an arch at the pounding water of the fountain, the swirling water on the floor, the gurgling water in the drains, Bitterblue allowed the noise and the earthy smell of it all to soothe her irritation.

'Lady Queen,' said a quiet voice to her side. 'How are you?'