Bitterblue

'You're not allowed to see the press,' he said. 'Kick me again and I'll kick you back.'

Tilda and Bren stood together at the press, working companionably. Turning their faces in tandem to see what the fuss was about; rolling their eyes at each other.

A moment later, Saf had yanked her into the back room and shut the door; and finally, she took a good look at him. One of his eyes was swollen half shut, blackish purple. 'Balls,' she said. 'What happened to you?'

'Street fight.'

She squared her shoulders. 'Tell the truth.'

'Why? Is it your third question?'

'What?'

'If you must go out again, Saf,' said Teddy's voice weakly from the bed, 'avoid Callender Street. The girls told me a building came down and brought two others with it.'

'Three buildings down!' Bitterblue exclaimed. 'Why is the east city so fragile?'

'Is that your third question?' asked Saf.

'I'll answer both your questions, Lucky,' said Teddy. In response to this, Saf stormed into another room and slammed the door in disgust.

Bitterblue went to Teddy's corner and sat with him in his little circle of light. Papers were strewn all over the bed where he lay. Some had found their way to the floor. 'Thank you,' he said as Bitterblue collected them. 'Did you know that Madlen stopped in on me this morning, Lucky? She says I'm going to live.'

'Oh, Teddy,' said Bitterblue, hugging the papers to herself. 'That's wonderful.'

'Now, you wanted to know why the east city is falling apart?'

'Yes—and why there are some strange repairs. Broken things repainted.'

'Ah, yes. Well, it's the same answer for both questions. It's the crown's ninety-eight percent employment rate.'

'What!'

'You're aware that the queen's administration has been aggressive about finding people work? It's part of their philosophy for recovery.'

Bitterblue was aware that Runnemood had told her that nearly everyone in the city had work. These days, she wasn't so quick to believe any of his statistics. 'Are you saying that the ninety-eight percent employment rate is real?'

'For the most part, yes. And some of the new work has to do with repairing structures that were neglected during Leck's reign. Each part of the city has a different team of builders and engineers assigned to the job, and, Lucky, the engineer leading the team in the east city is an absolute nutpot. So is his immediate underling and a few of his workers. They're just hopeless.'

'What's the leader's name?' asked Bitterblue, knowing the answer.

'Ivan,' said Teddy. 'He was a phenomenal engineer once. He built the bridges. Now it's lucky if he doesn't kill us all. We do what we can to repair things ourselves, but we're all working too, you know. No one has time.'

'But, why is it allowed to go on?'

'The queen has no time,' said Teddy simply. 'The queen is at the helm of a kingdom that's waking up from the thirty-five-year spell of a madman. She may be older now than she was, but she still has more headaches and more complications and confusions to deal with than the other six kingdoms combined. I'm sure she'll get to it when she can.'

She was touched by his faith, but baffled by it too. Will I? she thought numbly. Do I? I'll grant that I'm dealing with confusions. The confusions push themselves in from everywhere, but I don't particularly feel like I'm dealing with anything; and how can I correct problems I don't even know about?

'As far as Saf's injuries go,' Teddy continued, 'there's this group of four or five idiots we cross paths with now and then. Brains the size of buttons. They never liked Saf to begin with, because he's Lienid and has those eyes and, well, has some tendencies they don't like. And then one night they told him to demonstrate his Grace, and of course he couldn't demonstrate a thing. So they decided he's hiding something. That he's a mind reader, I mean,' Teddy explained. 'Whenever they see him now, they punish him as a matter of course.'

'Oh,' whispered Bitterblue. She couldn't stop her mind from playing it out for her, the punching and kicking that probably constituted their kind of punishment. Punching and kicking of Saf, of his face. She pushed it away. 'So then—it wasn't the same people who attacked you?'

'It wasn't, Lucky.'

'Teddy, who did attack you?'

Teddy answered this with a quiet smile, then said, 'What did Saf mean about you asking your third question? Are you two playing a game?'

'Sort of.'

'Sparks, if I were you, I wouldn't agree to play Saf's games.'

'Why?' asked Bitterblue. 'Do you think he lies to me?'

'No,' said Teddy. 'But I think there are ways in which he could be dangerous to you without ever telling a single lie.'

'Teddy,' said Bitterblue, sighing. 'I don't want to talk riddles with you. Could we please not talk riddles?'

Teddy smiled. 'All right. What should we talk about?'

'What are these papers?' she asked, passing them to him. 'Is this your book of words or your book of truths?'

'These are my words,' said Teddy, holding the papers to his chest, hugging them protectively. 'My dear words. Today I was thinking about the P's. Oh, Lucky, how will I ever think of every word and every definition? Sometimes, when I'm having a conversation, I become unable to pay attention, because all I can do is tear apart other people's sentences and obsess over whether I've remembered to include all their words. My dictionary is destined to have great gaps of meaning.'

Great gaps of meaning, thought Bitterblue, taking a breath, breathing air through the phrase. Yes. 'You're going to do a wonderful job, Teddy,' she said. 'Only a person with the true heart of a dictionary-writer would be lying in bed, three days after being stabbed in the gut, worrying about his P's.'

'You only used one word beginning with P in that sentence,' said Teddy dreamily.

The door opened and Saf stuck his head in, glaring at Teddy. 'Have you divulged our every secret yet?'

'There were no P-words in that sentence,' said Teddy, half asleep.

Saf made an impatient noise. 'I'm going out.'

Teddy woke right up, tried to sit up, then winced. 'Please don't go out if it's only to look for trouble, Saf.'

'When do I ever have to look for it?'

'Well, at least bandage that arm,' he insisted, proffering a bandage from the small table beside his bed.

'Arm?' said Bitterblue. 'Did they hurt your arm?' She saw, then, the way he was holding his arm close to his chest. She got up and went to him. 'Let me see,' she said.

'Go away.'

'I'll help you bandage it.'

'I can do it.'

'One-armed?'

After a moment, with an irritated snort, Saf stalked to the table, hooked his foot around a chair leg, yanked the chair out, and sat. Then he pushed his left sleeve to his elbow and scowled at Bitterblue, who tried to keep her face from showing what she felt at the sight of his arm. The entire forearm was bruised and swollen. A long, even cut, fully the length of her hand, ran along the top, neatly stitched together with thread, the dark reddish tinge of which came, she knew, from Saf's own blood.

So, pain was at the base of Saf's fury tonight. And perhaps humiliation? Had they held him down and cut him deliberately? The incision was long and neat.